


Beneath These Skies

by bendingsignpost



Category: Fire Emblem: Soen no Kiseki/Akatsuki no Megami | Fire Emblem Path of Radiance/Radiant Dawn, Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gen, John with a sword, See notes for warnings, War, video game fusion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-24
Updated: 2012-12-05
Packaged: 2017-11-16 23:53:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 7
Words: 37,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/545209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bendingsignpost/pseuds/bendingsignpost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An ex-soldier-turned-healer, a priest, and an unhorsed knight flee for their lives after the invasion of their homeland. John didn't expect the road to safety to be easy, but the addition of a petite mage and a scowling former prisoner to their small band opens his eyes to horrors beyond imagining.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue: Flight to the Border

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vyctori](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Vyctori).



> Warnings for: blood, violence, references to torture, references to mutilation, references to past rape and threats of rape (no rape occurring during the course of the story), fantasy racism (racism toward magical creatures), war, suicide contemplation. 
> 
> As this is a fusion between a TV show and a video game, set in the video game world, here is a [link to the map](http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20090729173329/fireemblem/images/9/93/Tellius_map.jpg). 
> 
> Edited by Vyc and Seiji. Written for Vyc.

“That was quick,” Mike says from against the barricaded door. He sits with his tome open across his knees and keeps looking behind himself as if Daein soldiers will burst through at any moment. John can hardly blame him.

“We’re not the first looters through here,” John needlessly reports. He sets down the bundle. “The meat’s gone or rotten, most of the barrels are broken open-” 

“We get the idea,” Bill interrupts. “Just tell me there’s food.”

“There’s food.” Barely. “Oi, no. Sit.”

Bill shakes his head, forcing himself up, leaning heavily on the butt of his lance. Blunted from use, the iron tip gleams in the light of the fireplace. “Been sitting too long.”

“Bill, no,” Mike insists, standing up as well. He doesn’t put the tome down—he never puts it down—but he does rush forward to Bill’s side and help John ease him back down onto the cushioned bench. All the while, he keeps the thick book pinned between his elbow and his side. The new tome of offensive magic is as much a comfort to him as John’s sword or Bill’s lance. “Rest that leg. There’s only so much we can do without magic.”

“We need you stable if it comes to hand-to-hand,” John reminds him. The sword at John’s hip is light, two-handed but slim. For all John can step in for the final blow, they all know Bill has to bear the brunt of any combat. After two days of staggering toward shelter, they know it very well. Bill may have survived, but his horse hasn’t. With all of them on foot and one of them limping, it’s been slow going.

Bill grits his teeth and does as told. John divides up the pilfered fare between the three of them, then goes to sit at the third door, the one without a barricade or a bar across it. It’s the sort of posh manse John hasn’t stepped in since his days in the Crimean army, and only ever then for award ceremonies. This is a country villa, a far cry removed from the capital homes, but posh nonetheless.

The light from the fireplace spills out into the hall and would do so even if they closed the door. John feels better keeping watch than closing it, and Bill clearly feels the same. They’ll sleep in shifts regardless of the seeming safety of the manse. John takes first, because John always takes first. Mike startles awake halfway through the night without fail, and Bill’s an absurdly early riser. It works out best this way, with John at the door.

Which is why John sees the shadows move.

He keeps watching until he’s certain, then stands up and meanders over to Mike by the fireplace. He puts his arm around Mike’s shoulders, familiar as can be and very casual at that. John can practically feel Bill perking up behind them, recognizing the signal for what it is. “Mage at the door,” John whispers. “Dark.” Dark means Daein. The country guards her magic secrets jealously.

The only reason Mike doesn’t tense is because his body is already as tense as physically possible. John can feel it through his shoulders.

“Blind him,” John whispers.

He releases Mike and returns to the door, walking calmly, hand careful not to touch the hilt of his sword. Behind him, he hears Mike begin to mutter. John counts out the phrases of the spell, then ducks and shields his eyes.

Piercing white light shines forward in a rush above his head. There’s a cry from the hall, higher than expected, and John finds the source of it lying stunned against the wall. Rather than run her through, John wrests the leather-bound tome from her arms. He steps back a good three paces in case of knives.

“What happened?” Bill shouts. “Did you get him?”

“It’s a girl!” John calls back. And a rather pathetic looking one at that. It’s not until she lowers her hand from her eyes that he realises his mistake. “Woman,” he corrects. A short one.

She squints up at him, curling in on herself, and John feels a right bastard.

“Crimean?” he asks.

She nods.

“Let us hear your accent,” Bill calls from the room.

“I’m Crimean!” she shouts. “And I wasn’t attacking!”

“You were a shape in the dark, and we’re all a bit jumpy,” John says. “I’m sorry.” He hesitates, then hands her the tome. “Aren’t dark mages from Daein?”

“My teacher was,” she says, clutching the book to her chest. “Looters killed her after the invasion. They thought she was a traitor. Her accent.”

“I’m sorry,” Mike says. He steps around John and offers her the hand not holding his own tome. Unlike John, he’s kept his cassock and still looks reasonably trustworthy in the white fabric. “We’re sorry and we’re not going to hurt you. Bill’s a Crimean soldier, and John and I are priests.”

The woman chews on her lip, and her fingers touch her long brown hair before accepting Mike’s hand. Mike pulls her up. Standing, she isn’t quite so small, but she’s still considerably shorter than the pair of them.

“If he’s a priest, why does he have a sword?” she asks, eying John. Without the cassock over them, his brown trousers and black shirt do little to mark him as a member of the clergy.

“Ex-army,” John says, the explanation well worn. “Invalided out while serving in the east.” It’s far from his first time fighting Daein, but never this deep into home soil. They’re west of the capital, for Ashera’s sake.

“What’s happening?” Bill calls.

“Civilian!” John calls back.

The woman frowns, trying and failing to peer around John and Mike. “Is he injured?”

“A bit,” John says. “There’s only so much a vulnerary can do.”

“Two priests and not a staff between them,” Mike says. “It’s something of a bad joke.”

“I, um,” the woman says.

Mike and John look at her.

“I have a staff,” she says. “I can’t use it myself. I’ve- I’ve been trying, but I can’t.”

“If we could borrow it for Bill,” Mike begins.

“Hold on,” John says, looking her up and down. “You’re not hurt.”

“No, his spell hit the ceiling,” she says.

Mike’s crap aim aside, that wasn’t what John meant. “If you’re not hurt, why have you been trying to use a staff?”

She chews on her lip a bit more.

“I’ll heal your friend first,” Mike promises.

“You can keep the staff if you do,” she answers immediately. “And there’s still a few things left in the armoury, if you need them.”

John thinks of the wear on Bill’s lance, the insubstantial heft of his own blade. “We’ll look through in the morning. Where’s your friend?”

“Ambush,” Bill calls.

“It’s not!” the woman protests. “Using the dark element doesn’t make me evil! It’s arcane, not _sinister_.”

“I’ll come with you,” John says. “Mike stays here.” Both of them can heal, but only John can hit a target with any reliability. Mike’s skill with tomes is an extremely new development.

The woman hesitates.

“What’s your name?” Mike asks.

“Molly,” she says.

“What’s your friend’s name, Molly?” Mike asks.

“I, I don’t know,” she admits. “He won’t tell me. He just lies there and he shouts when I try to get near, but you can see where the blood’s soaked through. I think he’s dying. I’m sure he’s dying, and he won’t let me help. He screams if you touch him. So I thought, you don’t have to touch if you use a staff. I think he’s been tortured. Flogged, I think. The problem is his back. He can’t lie down on it, but if I come into the room while he’s sleeping, he gets off his stomach right away. And his, um. His rear. He won’t sit. And he’s not eating either.”

“All right,” John says. He’s not seen the results of a flogging himself—Duke Renning had reformed the Crimean army enough by John’s time that he’d never had to fear for his life from his own officers—but he knows the stories. “Let’s get that staff.”

Molly nods and turns to go into the dark.

“Wait, hold on.” John fetches a torch, one of their few. Bill looks at him as he would at a complete idiot as John lights the brand in the fire. John shifts the torch into his left hand, freeing his sword hand, and Bill nods.

When they exit into the hall, Mike shuts the door behind them. It’s not a long walk, not in terms of distance, but they glance at each other much too often for the journey to be an easy one.

“How long have you been here?” John asks.

“About a week,” Molly says. “I think... Mm. My teacher was killed the night we heard King Ramon was assassinated. Then I was here three days after.”

“That’s about six or eight days here, depending on how fast news spread to your town.”

Molly nods. “I think eight? Anyway, the Daein soldiers had already been through when I got here. Bit of a rush job, I think, them leaving anything. I think they were pursuing someone, but I don’t know who.”

“Probably off to kill more nobles,” John says. “Get rid of all the heirs to the throne and take the country for good.”

“Wouldn’t Begnion stop it?” Molly asks.

“I don’t know. Begnion was willing to let go of Crimea and Daein in the first place. Honestly, do you think we’d be a country if they had cared enough to keep us as colonies?”

Molly shakes her head. “I just...”

“Sorry. No, you’re right. Have hope.”

They walk a bit longer. “He’s down this way.”

John stops. “Molly, that’s a dungeon.” Buildings like this might have once served as prisons, local lords taking the law quite seriously indeed while they lived in more humbly furnished conditions, but no one keeps thieves in the basement of a rich country home.

“I told you,” she says. “He won’t let me near him.” She keeps walking into the dark, unaffected by the lack of light.

After a long pause, John follows. It’s that, or lose her. Iron bars gleam in the torchlight. Distantly, above the sound of their footsteps on stone, John hears a low groan. He smells decay and damp and piss. As they draw closer, the unmistakable reek of shit and infection becomes clear.

“I’m back,” Molly calls softly, standing before a wall of bars. “I brought a healer.”

John lifts the torch higher, shedding light into the recesses of the cell. There’s a man inside, half-dead as promised. He’s curled on his side, collapsed facing the bars. A pewter plate lies beside his head, a biscuit and a strip of jerky untouched. Next to this, a staff. The orb at the top is a blood red. Basic healing, then, not mending. This will take some doing.

Molly pushes at the door. It holds fast. She sighs, then pats down her pockets. John hears the soft thump of her hand against her tome, now concealed. The folds of her skirts conceal slits beneath her belt, and the slits lead to sizeable pockets. That’s probably a mage thing, he assumes.

“Sir, are you awake?” John calls.

There’s no answer, but the man’s attention centres on John with a palpable shift.

“My name’s John. I’m Crimean. I’m here to heal you.”

The man rasps something.

Molly finds a pair of keys and opens the door. “He keeps locking it,” she says. “I haven’t been able to work out how. He got out of the shackles on his own, so I know he could leave if he wanted. He just... doesn’t seem to want to.”

The man rasps something more.

John and Molly fall silent.

The man struggles to sit up, to crouch. His arms press against the floor, and he cries out.

“No,” John says. “No, you hold still.”

“Stay away,” the man commands.

“I’ll put the sword down,” John promises. He draws it and sets it on the floor. He hands the torch to Molly. “I’m unarmed.”

“Stay. Back.”

John holds up his hands. “I’m unarmed,” he repeats.

The man lifts his head. His hair blends into the dark, but his eyes glint in the torchlight, flecks of steel in the marble of his face. John steps backward involuntarily. The hairs on the back of his neck rise.

“Touch me, and I will kill you,” the man promises.

“You don’t look in any state to kill me,” John says.

“I never said it would be immediate.”

That, John believes. “Then you’ll have to follow me to Gallia,” John warns. “You won’t be in any state to do that unless you let me help.”

“Gallia?” Molly repeats. The terror in her voice is abrupt, but no less real for it. “Why Gallia?”

“Our king had a treaty with theirs,” John says. “I was at a ceremony for it, and Bill was stationed there for a while. He knows the way back.”

“But they’re animals,” Molly says. “It’s an entire country of sub-human beasts.”

“Who might not want to kill us,” John says. “As opposed to a whole lot of humans who definitely do.”

A pained grunt pulls their attention back to the man in the cell. He’s sitting up now, breathing hard.

“Let me help,” John says.

“Take me to Gallia.”

John cocks his head. “Sorry?”

“You claim to want to help,” the man says. His breathing is heavy. “Take me to Gallia.”

John stares at him, thinking of rations and the drag of the wounded. “Only if you can walk. I’m sorry, but I won’t have my friends killed for your sake.”

“Hardly something to be sorry for,” the man remarks wryly.

“It’s really not, is it,” John agrees.

“You’re going to leave me here?” Molly asks, stricken.

The man scoffs. “When did I ask you to stay?”

“You can come too,” John says. “Provided Bill and Mike agree.” Two people for the price of one staff. To be fair, Molly’s ranged magic could readily prove to their benefit, especially with Daein’s fire mages relegated to Crimea’s western border with Gallia. Fire against the beasts, but fire is weak against dark magic. More to the point, light magic is weak to fire magic, and that’s Mike rendered useless. “You, can you fight?” John asks the man.

The man doesn’t immediately answer. After a long pause filled by the crackling and popping of the torch, he replies, “We’ll see.”

“I can’t go to Gallia,” Molly insists. “That’s, that’s too dangerous.”

“Fine,” the man snaps. “Stay.”

“Come with us until we find a town,” John offers. “How about that?”

Molly hesitates, then nods.

“I’m coming in now,” John says. He edges through the door, part of him unable to ignore the sense that Molly is about to lock him inside. War and paranoia: two things he’d thought he’d missed as a civilian.

Down on one knee, he picks up the staff and holds the orb over the man’s lap. He closes his eyes and mouths the words and _pulls_. The red glow shines against his eyelids, and the man gasps as the power enters him. When John opens his eyes, the man’s face is wet. Relief from pain, John knows, can be more moving than pain itself.

“That isn’t all of it,” John half-asks.

The man shakes his head.

“I only need to hold this near the general area,” John promises. “I won’t touch or look, but I’ll need to lift any fabric off the wounded area. It’s going to hurt and it will reopen the wound if the scabs stick, but this way, it will heal properly.” He waits for the man to answer. Listening to Molly shift behind him at the door, he waits for some time.

The man’s head twitches up and down in a nod, and John shifts to kneel at his side. He holds the staff out, the orb behind the man’s shoulder blades and ruined shirt. He pinches a bit of the shirt by the small of the man’s back and begins to pull it back, not up. It peels away, setting the man hissing between clenched teeth. A second spell, and the man is breathing steadily. A third, and John find nothing left to repair. It does nothing for his clothing, of course, or his state of cleanliness.

“Better?” John asks.

“As much as I can be,” the man replies.

“Any damaged areas still need to be washed,” John reminds him. “There’s a pump in the kitchen.” Bill used a folded saddle blanket: they’ll wrap him in that. In the morning, they can search the manse for a fresh shirt.

“No,” the man says.

“No, they do need to be washed, and no, there really is a pump. I’m hardly offering to wash you.”

“Good.” He pulls his legs up to his chest and drops his head on his knees. One eye remains open and his body fails utterly to relax, unable to have John near and unwatched.

John pulls away rather than disturb him further. “We’ll gather supplies in the morning and set out by noon. You can come sleep upstairs with my lot, or you can stay down here.”

The man doesn’t hesitate. “I’ll stay.”

“In a cell.”

“Yes.”

“In a cell in the dark.”

“Yes.”

“He’s always like this,” Molly says.

“What about you?” John asks.

“Somewhere else,” Molly says. She folds her arms across her chest, pulling back slightly. “I’ve been fine so far.”

Not for the first time, John wishes there was a way to say “We’re not about to rape you” without causing further alarm. “Just thought I’d ask,” he says. “Mike can’t sleep without me or Bill near these days. Safety in numbers and all that. I know mages get jumpy.”

Molly doesn’t reply, eyes steady on him in the dim light.

“Should we, um. Leave you a bit of fire?” John asks the man, stepping out of the cell with staff in hand.

“I can’t sleep with light,” the man replies. “Close the door.”

John closes it.

“Lock it.”

Molly locks it.

“Good,” the man says. “Now leave.”

“Wait,” John says. “Who are you?” Posh tones, wants to go to Gallia: it’s curious if John’s ever heard of anything.

The man doesn’t so much as lift his head from his knees.

“Just your name,” John insists. “We can’t go around calling you ‘the bloke in the dungeon.’”

“Why not?” the man counters. “It’s what everyone else calls me, more or less.”

“You’ve been in there since before the invasion.” A criminal?

“Obviously.”

“Er. Why?”

“Leave it,” Molly whispers, pushing at John’s arm. “Just leave it.”

The man is already laughing, a low rolling chuckle that gains in intensity without ever rising in volume. The hairs on John’s arms stand up, his skin prickling.

“‘Why’?” the man repeats. “There isn’t a _why_. Are you afraid I’ll steal your things and kill you in your sleep?”

“Are you planning on it?”

“No,” the man snaps, his entire body jerking with the word.

“Then I’m not afraid,” John answers evenly. “Get some sleep. Lots of walking tomorrow.”

He turns away immediately after, letting Molly pull him in the proper direction. Down the passage and up the stairs, round the corner and down the second hall. When the flicker of light from Mike and Bill’s fire can be seen spilling into the hall, Molly stops and hands John the torch.

“We could drop you off at a border town,” John says. “Be better than staying here alone. Be better than staying here with him, come to think of it.

Her hand drops to her skirt, likely to the tome beneath. “It’s fine,” she says. “I’m fine. He’s harsh because he’s hurt.”

John disagrees but nods. “I’ll see you in the morning. And thanks. For this.” He lifts the staff.

Molly’s mouth twitches in what might be meant as a smile, and then she waits for John to go.

John does, and only once he has his back turned does he hear her footsteps receding into the dark. He shakes his head, calls out his return to his mates, and finally fixes up Bill’s leg properly.

 

In the morning, John’s back is stiffer from the floor than it usually is from the ground. They gather up what they can from the kitchens and pantries, Bill taking a greater load than before and entirely without complaint. For once, the man’s in a good humour.

Molly joins them in the small armoury, a bundle in her arms and a second staff tied onto her back with twine. “Food and tomes,” she says. “I can’t use some of them yet, but.” She leaves the thought unspoken: but enough combat experience may change that. Mike takes the second staff off her with a soft thank you.

“Where’s your friend?” John asks.

“He’s coming,” Molly says. “I gave him fresh clothes and some water. He wanted privacy.”

“Is he a criminal?” Bill asks. “If he can pick locks, he’s a thief, isn’t he?”

“Bill,” Mike chastises.

Bill keeps on looking through the drawers and cabinets for anything worth looting, apparently failing to see the irony. “It’s an honest question. We could use a man who can open doors.”

“He can open doors,” John says. “Whether he’s a thief or not, it’s not as if we have anything worth stealing.”

“Food,” Bill says immediately. “That’s always worth stealing, and you know it.”

“We’ll be feeding him anyway,” Mike says.

“If he can’t pull his weight,” Bill begins.

“He’s a civilian,” John interrupts. “And he’s been locked up for a while now. If he can manage a day of walking without falling over, that’ll be good enough.”

Bill doesn’t say anything, which is as good as compliance.

Close to noon, the man appears. He’s taller than expected, long and with an uncertain stride. He keeps a hand on the door, not quite entering the armoury. Framed by sunlight, drained by the relative brightness, his sickly pallor is more evident. The clothing Molly gave to him is ill-fitting, a loose shirt that hangs wide. It’s the same kind of faded black shirt that Bill wears under his red armour, thick and meant to take a beating in as many ways as possible. It’s belted in place about his waist by a blue sash of cloth and continues down his undyed trousers to mid-thigh.

“Ah,” says Mike. “You must be, um. Molly’s friend.”

“We’re not friends,” the man replies without hesitation.

Molly makes a sound, and the three civil men in the room do her the courtesy of not looking at her.

“Are you really about to walk to Gallia in a pair of sandals?” Bill asks.

John blinks and looks.

“Yes,” the man says.

“Fine,” Bill says. “How much do you think you can carry?”

“Bill, his back was torn open,” John interrupts. “Give him a few days.”

“Even movement of the arm could tear the skin open, to say nothing of the muscle,” Mike agrees.

“I can carry whatever I need to,” the man says. “If that’s your only concern, we should be off.”

Bill’s expression flicks through irritated and settles on focused. Everyone gathers up their things, Molly included, and when the man struggles to thread his arms through the loops of his pack, no one says anything.

 

They walk.

Bill takes point, Mike behind him. Molly and the man from the dungeon follow. John takes up the rear, sword sheathed but at the ready, staff fastened across the top of his pack.

The man’s pace is poor, which is the best John expected. He lags farther behind Molly each time John looks. The man fidgets, jumpy in the extreme, and he stumbles over more obstacles than actually exist. When John reaches to help him, he gets his hand slapped for his trouble.

“Do _not_ touch me,” the man hisses. “ _Never_ touch me.”

“Fine,” John says. “You can fall on your face.”

The next time, the man does. He utterly fails to catch himself, arms thrown back, spine arched. His stomach slaps down hard on roots and soil. His chin is raised off the ground, but only just, and his gasp of air nearly goes unheard under the percussive sound of his body and the frantic cries of startled birds taking flight.

“Graceful,” John says, reaching for his staff. “Might want to keep it down. Daein is only killing Crimean soldiers and healers first. It’s a bit of a concern.”

The man mutters something into the dirt. It sounds a great deal like “I don’t care if you die.”

John kneels down next to him and pulls on the staff’s power.

The man’s breathing hitches.

John stands up. He waits.

Slowly, painfully, the man climbs to his feet. He tries and fails to use his arms, then works out how to use his legs.

“We’re falling behind,” John prompts.

“I noticed.” The man brushes dirt from his clothes, then adjusts his pack. His face is tight with the strain of remaining impassive.

John resumes walking and doesn’t look back. Soon enough, the man walks at his side. His breathing is laboured, his strides faltering, and when John looks to see why the man keeps falling, it’s because he walks with his eyes fixed on the sky.

 

They camp outside. Bill’s spotted traces of Daein activity in the area, and they don’t risk a fire. Instead, they huddle in the relative shelter of three closely set trees, sitting in the cup of their roots. The night isn’t so cold, though John does envy Mike his layered priest’s robes. They’re rubbish for a swordfight, but they’re warm.

Bill removes his armour for the night while there’s still light, and Molly helps him cover the metal against the damp of morning dew to come. The food they don’t eat is set in a bag up a tree. The man from the dungeon sits at the edge of their shelter without leaning. He sits as poorly as he walks, as if uncertain of the basic concept. Once the sun begins to set, he stops talking as well.

“What was Gallia like?” Molly asks Bill as the five of them fail to sleep.

“Big,” Bill answers after a thoughtful pause. “You’ve your cats, your tigers, and your lions. These aren’t kitty cats, Moll. The cats are bigger than dogs when shifted, and the tigers bigger than ponies. Lions, oh, I’ve only ever seen the one, just a glimpse, but he was huge even unshifted. Great big and red, with a tail that could knock over a horse. While unshifted, mind you. The important buildings are all built for the lions. Because they pick their rulers based on strength. The lions have ruled for, oh, centuries I’d say. As long as there’s been a Gallia.

The man from the dungeon scoffs.

“Something to say?” Bill asks.

The man says nothing.

“So are there towns?” Molly prompts after a lengthy pause. “Villages?”

“Tribes and dens,” Bill corrects. “Some houses, too. The architecture is surprisingly Begnion.”

Again, the man from the dungeon scoffs.

“What?” Bill asks.

“‘Surprisingly Begnion’,” the man mocks.

“It is,” Bill states evenly.

“Of _course_ it is,” the man dismisses. It’s not sarcasm. It’s definitely dismissal, and John frowns to hear it.

“You’ve been to Gallia before.” John doesn’t ask it.

“I’ve passed through,” the man says.

“Tell me where we’re going, then,” Bill challenges.

“Through the sea of trees. Dense, humid. They go on for miles and give way to shorter foliage. We’ll find old forts crumbling on the other side.”

“...Right,” Bill says, surprise clear in his voice.

“You made it through without the beastmen attacking you?” Molly asks.

“Molly, your Daein tutorage is showing,” the man says.

“Sorry?” she asks.

“They call themselves laguz,” Bill explains.

“That means Children of Strength, doesn’t it?” Mike chimes in.

“Don’t know,” Bill says, but John trusts Mike’s expertise. Magic and language are as close a fit as medicine and bandages.

“It does,” says the man. “And its counterpart is frankly idiotic.”

“Counterpart?” Molly asks.

“Beorc,” Bill says. “What they call humans.”

“Children of Wisdom,” Mike translates from the ancient tongue.

“Why’s that idiotic?” Molly asks the man. “It’s nice.”

“Humans are morons.”

“Yes, thank you,” John says briskly. “You can be quiet now. I’m sure it won’t hurt you.”

The man settles down into an obvious sulk. John can see his outline in the faint starlight.

The conversation effectively dies, and they take turns attempting to sleep through the night.

 

After two days, they find what was once a village. Mike lingers at the burnt remains of the town wall while John and Bill rush ahead, rooting through the burnt rubble that lies in rectangular slumps. Their hands turn sooty, their boots coat with ash, and the lingering scent of charred wood and flesh has them fighting down bile.

Keeping close to Mike’s side, Molly hugs herself, shoulders hunched, head bowed. Her not-friend keeps his distance, otherwise impassive.

“I found one!” Bill cries, and John rushes to him only to discover Bill means a corpse. The next search is for a shovel. Ultimately, they bury the man—they think he was a man—in a stripped vegetable patch, the soil soft there. Bill and Molly bow their heads, and John grabs the man from the dungeon by his pack to haul him into line. John has never felt more hated by anyone than he does by that man at that moment, but he holds firm, and when Mike conducts the funeral, there are four witnesses.

“Thanks,” John murmurs to the man after Mike’s finished, but the man simply walks away.

“Where’s everyone else?” Molly asks aloud, the thought John’s been wondering since they arrived.

“Taken to a prison,” Mike says. “Or thrown in the river. We need to be careful about what we drink for a few miles.”

They all turn to look at him.

“There’s a sign.” Mike points back to the remains of the town wall John and Bill had hurried past. “Daein warning all Crimeans not to lend aid or shelter to the false heir.”

Bill and John look at each other in confusion.

“What false heir?” Bill asks.

“There’s a description of a girl claiming to be the king’s daughter,” Mike says.

“The king didn’t have a daughter,” Molly says.

“I know, but that’s what the sign says,” Mike replies.

“Does it matter?” the man snaps.

“Does it matter why a village was slaughtered?” John demands, turning on him. His hands are fists and cannot be anything else. “Does it matter why families were burnt to death in their houses?” He storms forward with every word until they’re toe-to-toe. “A bunch of lunatics hated them so much for _no good reason_ and now they’re _dead_ , and you’re asking _does it matter_.”

John does not punch and he does not shove, but he wants to. He wants to so damn much. Instead, he bites his lip and shakes.

The man’s eyes are wide. Shocked, for the first time. “That’s not what I asked,” he says quietly. No longer lacquered in scorn, his voice is entirely different. Softer and rougher at once, a sound like the calloused hand of a professional soldier as he presses a palm to his son’s fevered brow.

John looks away, but he doesn’t step back.

“Does it matter if there is an heir,” the man clarifies. “Or if it’s an opportunist. Does that change anything?”

“Not unless she’s about to overthrow Daein on her lonesome,” Bill says, and John nearly jumps.

“I’m coming to Gallia,” Molly announces, loud about it.

Everyone turns to look at her.

“Sorry,” she says. “I just. I don’t know if now’s the time to say it. But. I’m not staying in Crimea if this is...” She looks around. “This is inhuman.”

“It’s not,” the man says.

“Sorry?” Molly asks.

The man gestures wide, then winces. Back and shoulders must still be problematic. “This,” the man says. “How is this not human? Is there any other animal that sets fire to another?”

Molly hugs her arms tight about herself. “Don’t say that.”

“Why not?” the man asks. “What’s wrong with saying what’s true? The only species to craft weapons and institute slavery, but burning down a few houses is _in_ human?”

“Stop it,” Molly says. “Just _stop_.”

“Leave her alone,” Bill says, stepping in between.

“I’m only speaking.”

“Leave her alone,” Bill repeats. He takes a step forward, armour shining dully below the stain of ash.

John steps forward as well, catching the man by his pack and tugging him towards the far side of the former village. “We can talk,” John says. “Come talk with me.”

For once, the man lets himself be pulled. Looking over his shoulder, John sees Mike pull Molly into a hug. She leans on him a bit.

“It’s hardly my fault she can’t cope with the truth,” the man states the moment John releases his pack.

“You don’t have to go shoving it in our faces,” John says, his tone as even as he can manage. “I don’t need to know what they did to you to know it was terrible--”

The man laughs. The hair on John’s neck rises.

“But that doesn’t mean you can take it out on Molly,” John continues. “She’s just lost someone.”

“And you’ve lost your sister,” the man replies. “Misplaced, more like. The same for Mike and his wife. Everyone is displaced and fleeing.”

John stares at him. “How...?

“Insight,” the man says. “It’s a simple matter of seeing.”

A magic skill, more likely. John knows his fair share about innate powers. “Then leave her be.”

The man looks at him oddly before turning, slowly, taking in the ruins. “You didn’t know anyone who lived here.”

“I don’t think so, no,” John says.

His eyes snap back to John’s face. “Then why are you grieving?”

John frowns. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

The man frowns back. Again, he scans the village. “What if they weren’t Crimean? What then.”

“What do you mean?”

“You were a soldier,” the man says. “You served alongside Bill until you were invalided on the eastern border with Daein. You returned to the west, training alongside Mike. You’d trained before together, the basics at least, but he chose the priesthood and you chose the sword. You don’t regret it.”

After a startled moment of staring, John manages to ask, “I still don’t understand the question.”

“Does a soldier care about anyone who isn’t one of his own?” It’s not a question, but an accusation.

“This one does,” John says. “And Bill. Lots of people.”

“Soldiers kill.”

“Sometimes they kill to stop the fighting.” John stops, shakes his head. “Look, I just. When someone kills the unarmed, you take up arms against them. However you can. If that means undoing their work by healing the victims or preventing their work by killing them, I’ll take whichever option I can. Both, if I can manage it.”

The man says nothing, eyes heavy on John’s face.

“Does that answer your question?” John asks.

The man nods.

John sighs and looks away, back to his friends. Molly’s recovered, and packs are being put back on. “Looks like we’re moving out. You just... Just stick with me in the back, all right?” The first step is always the hardest, breaking inertia, but John takes it all the same.

“Sherlock.”

John looks over his shoulder into eyes like coal. “Sorry?”

“My name,” the man says.

“Oh.”

The man shifts the straps of his pack, and John pretends not to see his wince.

“All right,” John says and walks on. “Keep up.”


	2. Chapter One: A Fight in the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An immense Sea of Trees serves as the border between Crimea and Gallia, plunging the party into darkness for their crossing. Behind, the enemy marches ever nearer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Betas: Vyc, Seiji, HiddenLacuna, marsdaydream.

The Sea of Trees looms like a tidal wave, younger trees building higher into towering crests of foliage. When the wind blows, the green ripples as if about to come rushing forward and drown them all. 

“Aptly named,” Mike murmurs.

“A bit,” John agrees.

“We need to gather up firewood before we go in,” Bill announces. “How about we _don’t_ play Make the Man in the Armour Bend Over, eh?”

Molly giggles, which is the best noise they’ve heard out of her since the village. Possibly since ever, come to think of it.

“But it sounds so _fun_ ,” Sherlock insists, and Molly giggles all the harder. It’s more than a bit blatant, the way Bill and Sherlock have begun to compete for Molly’s adoration, but morale has never been higher.

John risks a grin and slings off his pack to pull out his blanket. “We can carry it in this. Easier.”

“Why do we need wood if we’re going into a forest?” Mike asks.

“Humidity,” Bill answers. “It’s going to be terrible on the armour. I don’t like it.”

“But finding water will be simple,” Sherlock says, explaining this to Molly. “It collects on leaves and the crooks of branches.”

Bill scoffs. “Oh, right, a hundred feet in the air. When the wind blows hard, a false rain falls. Not a cloud in the sky, but the trees themselves rain down on you.”

“A hundred feet under the canopy, how would you know what the sky looks like?” Sherlock counters.

“Boys,” John warns. “A little more help with the wood, a little less everything else.”

In the end, it’s a task for Mike, Molly, and John, but Bill and Sherlock direct.

 

Walking into the forest is like being swallowed by a misty shadow. Though nearly noon, the light is that of late evening. There isn’t a tree that isn’t thicker than Bill is tall, and the sunlight cannot overcome their canopies. John can only hope they have enough torches to make it through.

“Is this how it always feels for you?” John asks Molly, voice soft.

She looks at him askance, then nods. “It doesn’t usually feel so... foreign. Shadows are home. I’m safe with shade.”

“That’s a magic skill, isn’t it? Innate or...?”

“It’s from a scroll,” Molly confirms. “It, um.” She watches her feet as she walks. “It was my mother’s.”

“Oh,” John says. “I’m sorry.”

Molly shakes her head, face still downturned. “She gave it to me before she died.”

They walk a bit longer in silence, the only sounds those of their feet, the wind, and the birds above. And then, of course, Sherlock stumbling.

John gives a little sigh, then slows his pace. Molly picks up hers, effortlessly taking the cue to join Mike. There’s something oddly fitting about the way they acknowledge each other, the light-wielder and the dark mage.

After about a minute of hearing Sherlock falling further and further behind, John stops walking entirely. Sherlock halts immediately.

John turns around to stare at him. Eyes scanning the forest, Sherlock doesn’t seem to notice. He stands with arms slightly outstretched, probably an attempt for balance, and the fear on his face is plain.

“Lose something?” John asks.

Sherlock’s gaze fixes on John, in direction if not in focus. The man walks forward, hitting his shoulder against a tree on the way. Immediately, Sherlock’s hand slaps down on the trunk. He begins to shift his feet forward, inching steps, checking for roots with tapping touches before moving. He doesn’t look down.

“You can’t see,” John realises. He unsheathes his sword, coming to Sherlock’s side and staring into the shadows beyond him. Sherlock flinches away and John remembers at the last moment not to touch. “When did this happen?” John asks quietly, as to not raise alarm and give away their position. “If there’s someone out there casting blindness, that’s important information, Sherlock.”

“It’s no spell,” Sherlock hisses. “It’s _dark_. Leave it.”

“What, leave you to walk into trees?”

Sherlock clenches his jaw.

John sheathes his sword, then pulls his staff from the top of his pack. He grips it just below the red orb and taps the butt against Sherlock’s hand. “Hold onto this. Grab my pack, too. If you start to fall, let go of the staff and hold onto me, all right?”

Sherlock aims a quizzical look at John’s forehead.

“What?” John asks. “I know how to care for the wounded.”

“I am _not_ wounded.”

“No, but I’ve seen men cut across the face and bleeding into their eyes. Same principle. Hold on and follow me.” He turns rather than invite further argument, the staff in his left hand. “Grab my pack with your right.”

A pause, then the slight tug.

The first steps are slow, Sherlock hesitating. With a spot of trial and error, they match their strides. The deeper into the forest they go, the darker it becomes, and the underbrush vanishes entirely. Beneath their feet, the forest floor turns to a damp cushion of dead, rotting leaves. Sherlock mutters to himself, disgust clear in his voice, and John remembers the idiot is wearing sandals.

Mike and Molly have stopped to wait for them, Bill standing restlessly beyond them.

“Oh, goddess, are you all right?” Molly asks, coming to them.

“I’m _fine_ ,” Sherlock snaps. “You may not have noticed, but some of us can’t see in the dark.”

“Is it really that dark?” Molly asks.

“Not for me,” John says.

“Your vision must have atrophied in the cell,” Mike supposes. “Little light leads to eye strain. I’ve known more than one librarian to lose their sight that way.”

“But that would take years,” Molly says, then freezes. “You weren’t in there for years, were you?”

“Not that specific cage, no.” Sherlock pushes against John’s pack and John walks a bit faster.

“What’s important is that we’re still mobile,” John says.

“Might even be quicker this way,” Bill says. “No offence, mate, but your balance is shit.”

“How long until we’re out?” Molly asks him.

“About a week,” Bill says. “That’s if we don’t get lost.”

“We won’t,” Sherlock says.

“Says the blind man.”

“North is that way.” John feels Sherlock let go of his pack to point. He’s too confident to doubt. “We need to go south and west.”

There’s a small moment of silence.

“Right then,” says Bill.

They keep walking.

 

That night, they hunt with magic. A flash of Mike’s spells have birds confused, startling away before Molly strikes them down with darkness. Sherlock waits with John and Bill behind a tree, keeping quiet and covering his eyes with one hand. He never does let go of John’s pack, not even when they’re crowded around a small fire. It puts Sherlock on the outside of their huddle, far from an unusual event. He still refuses any form of direct touch.

“Can you see?” John asks quietly. Everything they do now is quiet, hushed.

“I can see the fire,” Sherlock answers, which is no answer at all.

“Right,” John says. “Everybody budge.”

Everybody does budge and John gives them all very pointed looks until they budge yet more. In the end, Sherlock settles down with Molly’s pack on one side and John’s on the other. Once in their circle, Sherlock pulls in on himself. He still wears his own pack, which isn’t surprising. For all the weight and friction obviously causes him pain, John thinks the barrier might be a comfort.

Their dinner has been plucked as much as possible, but on more than one fowl, some feathers have charred on the crackling skin. Bill takes care of those with his knife before he begins to cut up the portions. Stomach empty, John reminds himself of a dog waiting for scraps, but he can’t be arsed not to stare. They’re all hungry. Mike and Molly get the first drumsticks, and John is anticipating the wings when Sherlock scrambles away without warning.

John’s on his feet in an instant but is still too slow to prevent Sherlock from knocking against a tree. Sherlock catches himself, both hands on the trunk, and then he leans over and gags.

Swearing softly, John goes to stand at his shaking shoulders. “It’s all right,” John whispers, unable to do anything more. He does not touch. “It’s going to be all right.”

Sherlock’s dry heaves continue, coughing and retching.

John stays with him until they stop.

“You don’t have to eat if you don’t want to,” John says.

“I want to,” Sherlock rasps.

“All right,” John says, standing. When Sherlock makes no move to follow, John asks, “Do you want to stay here?”

Sherlock hesitates, then nods.

“All right.” John returns to the fire for what has been saved for them.

“Is he all right?” Molly asks.

“He’s fine.”

“The man’s falling apart,” Bill mutters.

“Not his fault,” John says. “And he’s a human compass, so don’t act like he’s useless.”

Bill raises his hands, and John backs down.

“We’re all on edge,” Mike says. “I expect we’ll be until we’re safe.”

John nods to him in thanks and retreats to Sherlock at the tree. His hands burn a bit, grease dripping down his fingers. They’ve a leg and a bit of breast meat between the two of them. Sherlock takes his portion without a word of thanks, but John hardly expects anything else. The man tears into the bird with sharp, vindictive bites.

“Chew your food,” John says out of Harry-born habit.

“No.”

“Fine. Enjoy choking.”

Sherlock finishes long before John does. Regardless of his compromised eyesight, he picks the bones absolutely clean. He licks his fingers, then wipes his hands on John’s trousers, over the shin.

“Lovely.”

Sherlock watches him eat.

John refuses to be rushed.

Sherlock keeps watching.

John rolls his eyes. “Vulture.”

“What?” Sherlock’s voice turns sharp.

“You’re hovering like a vulture. It’s my dinner, not yours.”

“Only if--”

A cacophony of avian screeches shatters the stillness.

“Sub-humans!” Molly cries.

“Quiet!” Bill snaps, stamping out the fire.

Sherlock sighs in the renewed darkness and grips John by the back of the shirt. “Don’t be an idiot: that was from the northeast. Humans, obviously.”

“Daein,” Bill confirms in hushed tones. “Bird laguz are much farther south, and beast laguz would never startle birds so badly, let alone sleeping ones.”

“What do we do?” Molly asks.

“We stay calm,” Mike says, “and we stay together.”

“Molly, can you still see?” Sherlock asks.

There’s a brief moment of silence.

“Are you nodding?” Mike asks.

“Oh, right, sorry. Yes, I can see.”

“Molly, we need you in front,” Sherlock stays. “Bill behind you, then Mike, then John and me. Find a good spot to hide. You know how to do that. We’ll walk in a chain. And we need Bill’s armour covered or he’ll shine in torchlight.”

They do as he says. Theirs is a slow, agonizing walk. All sounds are thunderous, including their own breaths. Molly brings them to what John thinks must be a fallen tree. The trunk is nearly horizontal, and they duck under it one after another.

“The bark’s fallen off in sheets,” Molly whispers. “Hold still.”

She leaves them huddled. John hears a soft dragging sound.

“Leave it,” Bill whispers. “No signs of deliberate shelter.”

Molly returns. Everyone shifts a bit, all save one. Against John’s side, Sherlock is shock-still. John doesn’t reach out to him. No sense in making matters worse.

The night passes with time and shivering, its end heralded by birdsong.

Neck aching, John peels his face off Mike’s shoulder. “We should move.” The birds will mask the sounds of their movements, at least while the sun rises.

Everyone shifts, everyone with the same exception. Sherlock is sound asleep, no matter how John shakes him. With a silent apology, John covers the man’s mouth with one hand and pinches the skin between Sherlock’s thumb and forefinger. Sherlock startles awake, John shushes him, and they move out.

“Which way is south?” Molly whispers.

Eyes failing to focus despite the growing morning light, Sherlock points.

They creep south.

 

They don’t hunt the next night, not when the light could betray their position. Irritable with hunger and lack of sleep, damp from humidity, they mutter through an ever-shifting debate on whether they are being followed and, if so, by whom.

“Why would Daein chase us?” Molly asks.

“Why would Daein chase us _this far_?” Bill corrects. “Even if they’d want to kill us back in Crimea, this is ridiculous. They have to be after someone else.”

Sherlock says nothing, his head slowly drooping.

“Should we try to scout them?” Mike asks.

“If they’re moving in the same direction as we are, they’ll overtake us,” John says. Quiet progress is slow progress. “No sense slowing down for them more than we have already.”

“We’ll find a good hiding place when it comes to it, and I’ll go look,” Molly says. “They won’t see me. As long as it’s not sub-humans.”

Sherlock’s head snaps up. “It’s humans.”

“We can’t be sure of that,” Molly argues.

Sherlock rolls his eyes in the dark, John’s sure of it. “If they wear armour, they’re human.”

“Here’s an idea,” John says. “If it is Daein, we’re in trouble. If it isn’t, we might be in trouble. So, let’s plan for trouble. We’ve two mages, a spearman, a swordsman, and a non-combatant who can’t see. If we’re attacked during the day, it’ll be dim, but they won’t carry torches. Molly casts a cloud of darkness, then Mike steps in to blind everyone. While they’re blinded, we run. Molly and Mike in the front. Sherlock, you’d be with Molly. Bill and I stay in the back and hold off hand-to-hand for you three for as long as we can.”

“If they have horses, they can run us down,” Molly says.

“Mike’s good with horses,” Bill says. “Flash of light to the nose and the riders won’t be chasing _us_.”

“And if attacked at night?” Sherlock asks.

“Mike stays in the back with me and Bill. We’ll run by the light of his attacks. Whatever happens, you stay with Molly. She can see, and you can keep her running south. We’ll try to follow you.

“Now,” John says, “are we all clear on that?”

There’s a small chorus of quiet confirmation. Sherlock doesn’t agree, but neither does he protest.

“Good,” John says. “Let’s try and sleep.”

 

Sherlock’s sense of direction meshes poorly with the natural paths of the forest. Trails which start south bend west and eastward paths turn north. For trees of such thickness, they’re closely spaced, and climbing vines rope them off from the forest beyond. They hesitate over cutting anything by blade, much too obvious a sign for tracking, but Molly points out their footsteps remain in the forest floor as if they were walking in wet sand. They go through.

It’s all an incredible loss of time, which is why no one is terribly surprised when they hear voices from the east. Everyone freezes, but no one stumbles, not even Sherlock. Too aware of the looming threat, John’s kept his staff across the top of his pack. He’ll need his hands for fighting. Sherlock keeps a hold of the end of John’s sheath instead.

A silent conversation ensues, gesturing toward trees and bends in the ground. They agree on a direction, and John gives Sherlock a warning tug before he begins to walk. Absolutely silent, Sherlock follows with the enemy at his back. When the options are hide or be heard, they hide. They stand in the shadows, hearts pounding, palms sweating.

“...with the reward money?”

“Dunno. It’s one hell of a purse.” The accents are Daein, no mistake.

“I’d open a shop,” says a third voice.

“A shop?”

“Yeah, a shop. My brother’s in leather working. Wyvern saddles and all that. Durable ones, not the shit kind that can’t take the spines.”

“There’s good money in wyvern saddles.” Fourth voice.

“Better money in princess-catching!” Fifth.

The soldiers laugh.

“She must have a lot of gold on her, hiring mercenaries.”

“They never said you needed to hand her over with her valuables. Give Her Royal Highness a nice, thorough search beforehand.”

Another group laugh.

Molly makes a tiny sound, only a tiny one, and Mike holds her hand.

The soldiers go by on the other side of the trees. Once they’ve passed, John tries to edge around to check for numbers and weapons, but Sherlock seizes the back of John’s pack and refuses to let go. John signals to Molly by hand and Molly checks instead. Heavy and potentially noisy in his armour, Bill simply stands very, very still.

They wait a good ten minutes before they begin to breathe easily.

“Scouting party,” Bill whispers. “How many of what, Moll?”

“One mage, two swords, one axe, and a spear,” Molly reports. “No healer.”

“Fire mage,” John assumes. This close to beastman territory, it must be.

“We’ll need you, Moll,” Bill warns.

Molly nods.

“If you can knock him, I can finish him,” John whispers.

“Let’s keep it from coming to that,” Mike urges. “We need to move on before they come back. The main force might be on its way.

The first steps are the hardest. They take a different path, Molly in front with Bill, and Sherlock nearly chokes John with his hold. They freeze at any sudden noise.

This is how they spend the next three days. They don’t dare light a fire, but neither do they dare drop their firewood. The humidity sticks to their skin and curls their hair. Bill begins to rust about the edges, and then he begins to squeak. They do what they can for the armour during the night or breaks during the day.

“How long has it been?” Sherlock whispers in John’s ear one night.

“This is the fifth night,” John whispers back, turning onto his side. He can feel Sherlock’s breath on his forehead.

“The fire was the first night,” Sherlock half-asks.

“Yeah.” John realises Sherlock hasn’t been able to see for four entire days. “We’re almost out.”

“Gallia."

“Yeah. Beorc and laguz.”

“Hm?”

“We have to remember to call ourselves that. And them,” John adds.

They lie in silence. Mike’s soft snores start up, and either Bill or Molly prods him immediately. Mike turns over and the snores die down.

“What will you do?” John asks. “In Gallia.”

“I need to see a man about a bird.”

“A beastman?”

“Laguz, John.”

“Right, laguz, sorry. What kind of bird?”

“Also laguz.”

John opens his eyes to the dark. He can’t even see Sherlock’s face. “There are bird laguz in Gallia?”

“Not generally, no. There’s limited movement.”

“The dragons stay in Goldoa, I do know that,” John says. That’s even farther to the south, west of Begnion. “They’re neutral, or we’d all be dead.”

“You’re not far off,” Sherlock allows.

“Do the birds have a country?” John asks.

“Islands,” Sherlock whispers. “Impenetrable by sea. In the morning fog, the tops of the cliffs look as if they’re floating in the sky rather than the water.”

“Pretty. You’ve sailed by, then?”

“Mm."

John’s willing to let it go, but Sherlock makes a quiet sound of smug amusement.

“It’s dangerous to sail by Kilvas,” he says. “The Shipless Pirates come to call.”

John frowns. “How can you have pirates without ships?”

“By flying.”

“Wyvern riders?”

“Raven laguz, John. Not everyone is human.”

“Beorc,” John corrects.

A shifting sound. Perhaps Sherlock has nodded in the dark.

When he says nothing else, John closes his eyes and sleeps.

He wakes to birds shrieking and Sherlock shaking him.

“They’re here,” Sherlock hisses.

John scrambles to his feet, then pulls Bill up. Sherlock waits for him on the ground until John grabs his hands and brings him to Molly. John can barely see in the early morning light, and a sudden surge of sympathy for Sherlock rises amid pre-battle jitters. He bats all of it down, swallowing thickly.

A tug on his pack: Sherlock.

John tugs back.

“There’s a light,” Mike whispers. “It’s coming this way.”

“They’re coming this way,” Bill corrects. “Move out.”

The fright of the birds masks the slight squeaking of Bill’s armour. Mike tries to oil him as they go, and John keeps behind Bill in the attempt to prevent him from shining.

Behind them: a shout, and then the pounding of hooves.

“Fuck, _run_ ,” Bill orders, harsh and low.

“Molly, run for vines!” Sherlock instructs. “They’ll tangle the horses.”

“There are no vines!”

Too late: the riders cut through them, three circling, one slicing through their group, sword clanging on Bill’s armour. Mike shouts a spell, and the horses rear, screaming from blinding light and controlling spurs. John slices a haunch, stabs a leg, and Bill shoves him forward before the downward stroke of an axe can split John’s skull.

Darkness rises from the forest floor to swallow horse and rider whole, and Bill stabs at where the rider ought to be. A shout and the rider falls, Bill’s lance in his side. John stabs the fallen man for good measure, then immediately turns to stand back-to-back with Bill as Bill pulls his lance from the corpse. They’re surrounded, the two of them, only the two of them.

Another flash of light, another surge of darkness. A horse comes screaming out of the dark, and someone shouts, “It’s a girl! It’s the princess!”

John hears Molly scream and nearly dies for the distraction. The javelin takes him in the shoulder, the bad one, and John staggers back. He flings a hand up, seizes the end of his staff, and the red flare of light can only stave off so much pain while he’s still impaled.

Bill yanks the javelin out of him mid-spell and promptly throws it into the neck of a horseman, his aim true in the healing light. The horseman gurgles and falls, and Bill scrambles onto the riderless horse, the picture of a Crimean knight once more.

“Come on!” Bill shouts, reaching for him. A surge of heat flashes between them and Bill’s horse bolts away from the fire spell.

Chanting the spell like a curse, John continues healing himself, the hand on his staff slippery with blood and blistering faster than his skin can be repaired. The red light of the staff turns him into a target. Arrows fly, stick in the forest floor, and the mage sets the firewood tied onto John’s pack ablaze.

Cursing in full, John lets the pack fall, sword in one hand, staff in the other. It takes juggling he can ill afford.

“John!” Bill shouts, charging toward him at a foolhardy canter, lance levelled over the horse’s shoulder. He stabs and pulls and slashes, and as he charges by, John makes no attempt to jump on, simply heals him as he passes before finishing off the mage Bill skewered on his way by.

Bill comes round for another pass, but the Daein cavalry rushes back. They’re sorely battered by spells of light and darkness, and more than one man has a look of visible confusion to see the only healer present is foe, not friend. Bill strikes down one injured man, shouting “Grab the horse!” but John’s hands refuse to relinquish either staff or sword.

He keeps close to the horse all the same, standing to the right of its rear haunch: out of kicking range, safe from bites or rearing, close enough to use the animal as a wall. Blocking the thrust of a lance sends the spear tip into the horse’s haunch, and the horse rears as if on John’s behalf, iron-shod hooves warning away Daein soldiers.

Another surge of darkness fills the air, fills all the air, and John bolts, running for where he last saw a gap in the soldiers. A blinding flash of light splits the darkness with a harsh clap. Thoroughly unable to see, John keeps running until he knocks into a tree. He scrambles around the other side, plants his staff in the ground until he can be sure he won’t fall over, and furiously blinks back the blotches floating before his eyes.

On the other side of the tree: shouted orders, the groaning wounded, the sound of a horse fleeing into the forest.

Bill, John hopes. Let Bill have escaped. Let them all have escaped.

John stays very still and tries not to breathe. He’s still bleeding, can feel dampness soaking through his collar. He’s not sure when that happened. He grits his teeth and doesn’t heal himself. No light. No light. The power tries to push up through his arm, the natural function of the staff in the hands of a trained magic-user, and John presses it back down. The mental strain of it is worse than the waiting, than the dread, but not worse than when a cheer goes up among the Daein soldiers.

“We got one!”

“Is it the princess?”

“Have we got her?”

“We’ll be rich!”

John swallows down bile. Molly’s no impersonator, and John has no doubts as to what the Daein soldiers will do to her when no reward for her capture is forthcoming.

Someone swears loudly. “Of course that wasn’t the princess, you idiot! That girl had brown hair!”

“Well, boys, at least we’ve got ourselves a new healer,” someone else announces.

Mike. _No_.

Shaking from the effort of it, John stays where he is. He can’t do anything to help, not without being cut down himself.

“How about it, priest? Welcome to the Daein army. Heal my men, and you’ll live a decent life. Refuse, and you won’t live any life at all. Am I clear?”

Braced for Mike’s refusal, John closes his eyes. He mouths a prayer.

He hears, “I-I-I c-ca-c-can’t ch-chant wuh-when f-fuh-fri-frightened,” and that is not Mike’s voice. That is a voice almost unrecognizable with its feigned stammer, and John’s stomach doesn’t simply drop: it vanishes entirely, leaving his insides twisting around a fresh void.

“Oh, brilliant,” someone gripes. “A blind priest with a stutter.”

John looks. He has to. He peers around the shielding trunk, and there’s Sherlock, sightless and surrounded, clutching a staff before him with both hands.

“If you can’t work under pressure, we’ve no need for you,” says the man clearly in charge, one of the two remaining riders. He walks his horse toward Sherlock, sword unsheathed. He brings the flat of it to Sherlock’s neck, letting him feel the chill of steel. Sherlock’s chin rises, but he doesn’t turn his face toward the cavalier.

John’s hands move without permission. They sheath his bloody sword. They unbuckle his belt. They hold fast to his staff. His feet scuff dead leaves over the sheath and belt. His feet take this work further and step out from behind the tree.

“I’m his assistant,” his mouth announces. “He doesn’t need to see to know his spells. That’s what I’m for. Take us both.”

“That’s the swordsman!” one of the men accuses, pointing to him with his axe. “That’s him!”

John pulls back his straining mind and lets the staff heal him. The red shine bathes their faces and brings armour to glisten beneath blood and soil.

“I’m his assistant,” John repeats firmly. “We’ll serve, but he needs me. Keep us together. You’ll have no complaints. We work as a team, but we work hard.” Belatedly, he thinks to kneel. “Please.”

The cavalier looks down at him impassively. “Heal my men.”

“Sir,” John replies, a word which here means _yes_.

One man at a time, his chanting loud and clear, John heals each of the men he and his friends have wounded. His voice remains level, remains steady, and he slows each chant just enough to drag it out without being told to hurry. Each spell is another minute for Bill to ride away with Mike and Molly. Each minute is another dark stretch of forest, and each dark stretch is a bid for safety.

When the last man comes to stand before John, the rider says, “Stop.”

John falls silent.

“Him.” The rider points to Sherlock.

“He needs me to guide him, sir.” It’s a risky move, speaking out of turn, but it’s hardly the stupidest thing he’s done in the past half hour.

“Fine,” the rider says, a tacit approval of John’s acceptance of his authority. Clearly, a commander of some kind.

With even strides, John walks to Sherlock’s side. He turns around, and Sherlock sets his hand on John’s shoulder as naturally as breathing. He doesn’t flinch at the warm wet that is John’s cooling blood, or perhaps someone else’s. They walk to the injured soldier with matching steps. Sherlock reaches out with Mike’s staff, with the staff Mike must have passed to him before joining the battle with his tome open in both hands. John’s arm rises, corrects the angle, perfects the proximity of orb to wound.

Haltingly, Sherlock begins to recite the same chant John has been repeating and repeating in the hopes Sherlock would memorize it. Sherlock has it now, has the words, but the man is so without magic that all the chanting in the world would do him no good.

“Wait, here, sorry,” John says, interrupting Sherlock before the spell would be complete. “Your armour, sorry. Need to adjust.” He keeps his hand on the staff, at the butt of it. Just fingertips. Not enough to look as if he could cast this way.

He looks up and the commander is watching John’s face. John looks back at him as Sherlock begins to chant once more. John doesn’t dare join in, doesn’t dare move his lips, but he does dare to think:

Sherlock’s words are John’s words. They were learned from John, they belong to John, they remain in John’s rhythm, they remain John’s. They are his in Sherlock’s voice, just as the healing power is John’s magic in a staff.

John can channel through a staff.

John can channel through a man.

Eyes locked with the Daein commander’s, John sees the red glow as it shines upon the commander’s face and armour. The orb on Mike’s staff shines, not John’s.

“Th-there,” Sherlock says.

John nearly looks at him, wondering how Sherlock knows it worked when he can’t see, when he can’t feel the magic, but remembers Sherlock can see light.

“How’re you feeling?” the commander asks his soldier.

“Fine, sir,” the soldier reports.

“Hm.” The commander eyes John and Sherlock both. He gives his men a nod and turns his horse around. “Bring them to the camp.”

Sherlock sets his hand back on John’s shoulder, his grip hard. The orb of Mike’s staff taps against John’s hand, and John holds it just below the fastening. It’s the same double-lead they’ve always used, an always of less than a week. Their coordination is flawless, the sort of lock-step Lord Renning could have been proud of, were he still alive, were Crimea still intact.

“John,” Sherlock whispers.

John gives the staff a light tug. No talking, not when surrounded by the enemy.

Sherlock squeezes his shoulder.

Silent in dread and understanding, they walk on into the dark. 


	3. Chapter Two: Behind Enemy Lines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Impressed into the enemy ranks, John and his new ally find service under Daein command threatens in more ways than one.

First are the uniforms.

John discards his garb with reluctance, but that does nothing to draw attention from Sherlock’s outright refusal. Bad enough he’d balked at the removal of his pack. This only compounds their captors’ frustrations.

“Sherlock, please,” John urges.

Sherlock doesn’t look at him. In the tent, lit by lamp, he must feign blindness, but he does it well.

“Let me help him, sir,” John asks the other priest in the room. He’s a hardened looking fellow, hair so dark and red as to nearly be purple in the dim light. Jason might be his name, if John had heard correctly. The cut of his hood indicates a bishop. “He’s not good with the unfamiliar.”

“Are you his assistant or his keeper?” Father Jason asks.

“A bit of both, sir,” John says. He folds his hands behind his back, standing at attention, waiting for another answer to his request. Sherlock does no such thing, unstable without the weight of his pack to lean against.

Father Jason waves him on.

John changes first, stripping down to his smallclothes and pulling on his own under robe and cassock. The under robe is red, the cassock white. He ties the red sash around his waist with a practised hand, the knot on the right. His trousers are searched for weapons, then returned to him. The same treatment awaits John’s boots.

“Your turn, Sherlock,” John murmurs.

Jaw set, Sherlock nods. He unties the blue length of cloth that’s served as a belt, then gingerly pulls the dark shirt over his head. He flinches with it over his head and hurriedly holds it out in John’s direction before smoothing down his curls. It’s a nervous tick John’s seen before, but never with the man standing shirtless and scarred. Less scarred than John, at least from the front, but then Sherlock unfastens his trousers and lets them fall. He steps out of them, and the ring of scar tissue around his right ankle is grotesque. Back to the wall of the tent, he looks like the cornered animal he is. That they both are.

John hands him the under robe. Sherlock pulls it on quickly, then futilely smoothes down his curls once again. “Arms to me,” John murmurs.

Sherlock turns, holds his arms back, and John slides the cassock up his arms, onto his shoulders. Sherlock runs his palms down the front, scouting the cloth, and he buttons it without difficulty. “Sash,” Sherlock instructs.

John hands him back his blue one and Sherlock binds it at once, knot on the left. A regional preference, they can claim. Perhaps that’s what it is in truth.

A pair of boots follow, worn and likely third-hand, but Sherlock’s sandals are hardly suited to an army’s march. For the Daein officials to recognise this is nearly kind.

“If you’re this slow at everything, you won’t be around for long,” Father Jason remarks, more statement than warning. So much for kind.

“That won’t be a problem, sir,” John promises.

“This one’s been in prison,” Father Jason says, eyeing Sherlock. “What were you in there for?”

“Asking questions,” Sherlock replies.

John clears his throat.

“Sir,” Sherlock adds, insolent enough that silence would have been the better option.

“What kind of questions?”

“Who assassinated Begnion’s previous Apostle,” Sherlock replies.

“That was twenty years ago,” Father Jason says.

Sherlock’s mouth twitches in a wry, undirected smile. “So it was. The theocracy was in chaos, as I recall.”

Father Jason considers him. Sherlock looks to be somewhere in his mid-thirties, and if he’s had a hard life—which he obviously has—he might be younger than that. “Apostle Misaha was killed by sub-human savages. Everyone knows that.”

Sherlock opens his mouth.

“ _Sherlock,_ ” John hisses. He needs no other warning sign than mere intake of breath.

Sherlock shuts his mouth.

Father Jason eyes them, then tells their guard to relocate them to their new tent.

 

The camp is large, possibly the main camp of the Daein army in the Sea of Trees. The tents are set up in rows that break formation only for the trees. Most tents have their flaps wide open in a bid for light. Sherlock won’t have to feign blindness here. Even so, John reaches for the hood on Sherlock’s robes and tugs it up over his head. Sherlock doesn’t startle, merely pulls the hood down lower. Keeping Sherlock’s sight secret could be the difference between captivity and escape, if they ever reach sunlight.

“Oi, Brian,” the guard says.

A middle-aged man looks up from fighting rust from his armour. His hair is fading into grey, his face tan and lined from the sun. “Yeah?"

“These two are with you.”

Brian frowns. “Reinforcements?”

John and Sherlock certainly don’t look it, not with Sherlock gripping John by the shoulder and trailing on a staff.

“New recruits,” the guard says dryly. “Thought you’d be a good one to show them the ropes. Healers, so not likely to kill you in your sleep.”

“Oh, cheers.” It’s difficult to tell whether that was sarcasm, but the guard evidently doesn’t think so.

“You two, stay here until called for. What Brian tells you to do, you do. Brian, keeping an eye on them is your business.”

“Got it,” Brian says. His accent is vaguely familiar.

The guard walks away and what feels like the entire Daein army shows up to peer at them. Sherlock steps closer to John’s back. The questions start up and John holds them off long enough for him to see Sherlock to a spot to sit down. The more widely his blindness is acknowledged, the more the Daein soldiers will underestimate him. “Sherlock, Brian is cleaning his armour. Can you help him?”

Sherlock nods, and Brian guides him through it. John stands and faces the enquiry alone:

No, they were not with the princess, any princess.

No, no idea where the princess might be, any princess.

They might have been the group the army’s been chasing. John doesn’t know.

They haven’t seen the princess, any princess. The girl with them was a dark mage. No, from Crimea. John doesn’t know where her teacher was from.

They are healers, John and Sherlock, and yes, Sherlock is blind.

No, Sherlock is not useless. Yes, he will pull his weight.

Yes, John has been in the army before. Yes, the Crimean army. No, he invalided out before the invasion.

“Crimean, the both of you?” one soldier asks.

John realises he doesn’t know. He covers his pause, saying, “Hard to be Crimean without a Crimea.”

The soldiers laugh. One claps John on the back.

“That’s what I think,” Brian says from behind him.

“No, that’s how you justify it,” Sherlock corrects.

The laughter immediately stops.

“Justify what?” Brian asks, voice low. “Are you calling me a traitor?”

“No,” Sherlock says. He doesn’t look up from Brian’s amour, doesn’t pause in his cleaning. “Your accent is west Crimean, rural. You’re fitting in well enough that you’ve been trusted with two strange healers, but it’s also a test. Not impressed, no. You volunteered. So, new soldier. Your rust removal technique suggests farm tools, not armour. Very new soldier. Not even a month, I’d say. If western Crimean, then it was reasonably into the invasion, after King Ramon was killed. Now, that puts you at three weeks at the most.

“Trusted enough to look after us after only three weeks? You must be very earnest. Why would you be earnest? Simple. Family. Rural, so a large family. You have daughters. Lovely daughters, I’d imagine: you’ve a good voice and a protective nature, you could have a lovely wife, and a lovely wife does so often lead to lovely daughters. The Daein army comes, offers protection or destruction, and you leap for protection. Your daughters live unmolested in every sense of the word. As you prioritise your family over your country, I imagine it’s worry, not guilt, that keeps you up at night.”

Sherlock falls silent and everyone falls with him, every last soldier in the crowd. Brian’s face is open and devastated. With such a response, no one doubts the truth of Sherlock’s words.

John clears his throat. “Blessed is the will of Ashera, who shines the light of truth into darkness.”

“Blessed is Her will,” mumbles the crowd.

“Soothsaying is often a blunt matter,” John says, looking soldier after soldier in the eyes. He holds his staff before him. Any scrap of authority in a storm. “It is a wearisome gift. If you have more minor concerns—illness, injury—kindly bring them to me.”

He turns to Brian. “You’re a good man, and a fine father. I would have done the same for my sister.” John says so, but he’s not sure. He can only hope Sherlock won’t naysay him.

“John did the same for me,” Sherlock announces. “Not everyone can see the value of a blind healer.”

“Do you now see?” John asks the crowd at large.

Men shift and look away. Some nod. Some mutter agreement.

“Strange magic,” one says. “But I’d rather it with us than against us.”

A general murmur of agreement rolls through the crowd. After a few more awkward moments, the crowd begins to disperse. Sherlock checks the armour for rust by feel, unperturbed.

Once as alone as they’re going to be, John kneels down at Sherlock’s side. Sherlock shifts where he sits, likely grinding dirt into the white of his cassock.

“Did you have to do that?” John asks quietly, but not softly.

“I won’t be an easy target,” Sherlock swears.

“I said I was going to look after you lot and I meant it,” Brian pipes in. “Priest or not, airing my business--”

“They all know it already,” Sherlock dismisses.

“True. But I take pains not to remind them.”

“Pointless,” Sherlock says. “You’re being tested. They’re reminding themselves.”

“But thank you, Brian,” John interrupts. “Sherlock, making everyone afraid of you is just as likely to get you killed, if they think they can get away with it.”

Sherlock shrugs.

“Here,” John says. “I can help with that too.”

Armour maintenance, then lunch, then an introduction to the unit he and Sherlock have been assigned to. It’s a squadron, not a scouting party, enough soldiers to justify two healers. There are concerns about Sherlock’s battlefield mobility. Sherlock puts back on the stutter, and John stresses how very important it is that Sherlock not be left without John in a combat situation. As mobility is an issue, John suggests a horse, Sherlock riding, John guiding. That idea is dismissed immediately. John is not surprised.

The demand for healing is softened by the supply of staves. Sherlock and John both turn in their staves and are provided with replacements which are clearly well on their way toward breaking. They have to be conserved. John feels the power left in each, and immediately takes the one with the greater charge. If anyone comes to them to be healed, John will make it a simple matter of a fresher staff.

That evening, John discovers that they have displaced Brian’s tent-mate. Sherlock claims to have already known. They lie down with John in the middle, Brian on one side, and Sherlock pressed as far against the side of the tent as he can go.

The next day is much the same, and the day after, they pick up camp. Sherlock is a surprisingly efficient packer for a sighted man without his sight, and he wears his pack without complaint. In fact, with the additional weight on his back, Sherlock’s balance actually improves. It’s a bit bewildering, and even Brian notices.

They walk. All the horses have their riders or loads, but one of the cavaliers offers to let Sherlock hop up behind him. The cavalier has a friendly, boyish smile to match his friendly, boyish face. It bothers John for more reasons than he can name.

“I have John for that, thank you,” Sherlock dismisses. They walk arm-in-arm today, the better for them to converse.

The cavalier’s face clouds, eyes flicking down to Sherlock’s lower half, and John can abruptly name a few of those reasons.

“No sense in exhausting your horse,” John agrees. “Not much fodder about. Thanks, though.”

The cavalier says nothing, merely pricks his horse with his spurs and moves on ahead.

“Did you memorise his face?” Sherlock asks. His voice is a low rumble meant only for John’s ears.

“Mm.”

“Good.”

“Which way are we going?” John asks.

“South. Bending back toward the east, around the mountains. The scouts have found a way through.”

“Do you know that, or are you guessing?”

“I overheard. Why they assume the blind are also deaf, I’ve no idea."

“Might not be worried about you hearing,” John points out.

“Mm.”

“There are some roots here. Long step over them.”

Sherlock steps. All is fine.

“Are you from Crimea?” John asks. “I never asked.”

“I lived there for the past fourteen years,” Sherlock replies. “I wouldn’t say I was from there.”

“Before that?”

“Begnion.”

“Oh,” John says. “Is that why you were asking about the Apostle?” Her death had thrown the country into, if not disorder, then a state of acute worry. John remembers hearing about it as a young man. He’d been in the army for roughly two years. “I was about, oh, eighteen, I’d say, when it happened.”

“I asked because it was worth knowing.”

“Who’d you ask?”

Sherlock’s lips twitch. “Those who declined to answer.”

“Nobility?”

“Mm. They took it poorly.”

John thinks of the scars on Sherlock’s leg. If John was eighteen, Sherlock could have been no older than sixteen. John tenses his arm under Sherlock’s, the closest he can risk to a squeeze.

Sherlock says nothing.

“Why don’t you think it was the, um, the laguz?”

“The accusations fell against the wrong tribe.”

“How do you mean?”

“Herons, John.”

“What about them?”

“They accused the herons,” Sherlock says. “Approximately two hundred years ago, the herons denied the ability of the Apostle to speak to the Goddess. Begnion’s war with Gallia at the time was carried out in Ashera’s name. Laguz are long-lived, far more than humans, and Begnion never allowed herself to forget that the herons who denied the Apostle’s power still lived.”

“I don’t...” Beyond that of Crimea, John hasn’t read much history. “Look, what you’re saying actually makes sense. Why couldn’t it have been herons?”

“Heron laguz sickened from conflict. Moreover, they had no physical strength to speak of. Some of them couldn’t even fly. Compared to this, the Apostle was an archsage of immense power. A single wind spell would have ripped a heron to shreds.”

“Scapegoats,” John says.

“Yes.”

“Then who killed the Apostle?”

“No one knows,” Sherlock murmurs. His tone leaves John wondering. His words put John on edge, but it takes time to realise why.

“You said ‘had no strength’,” John says.

“I said ‘no physical strength’. Their magic was impressive for its restorative power.”

“You keep using past tense.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes, which is possibly out of character for a blind man. John honestly doesn’t know. “John, what do you think happens after the most beloved Apostle of Begnion’s entire history is killed and her murder is attributed to a pacifist species?”

“But, you said. The islands. You said they were—oh. Pegasus knights. Ashera, and the Dracoknight Guard. That...”

Sherlock shakes his head. “The herons lived in a forest within Begnion’s borders. Serenes Forest.”

“What happened?” John whispers.

“Burned.” Sherlock’s eyes remain fixed straight ahead, unfocused iron.

“All of it?”

“All of it.”

They walk a minute or three in silence.

“Roots,” John says.

They step over them.

“Was it all of them?” John asks. “Past tense, so...”

“There are a few. They’re still high in demand in slaving circles.”

“Wait, no,” John says. “Apostle Misaha outlawed the slave trade. I remember that: it was part of why she was so popular. King Ramon made a big deal out of it. Crimea had finally taken the lead on an issue. That was why we’d fought for our independence, part of why. We don’t often have Begnion following us.”

“Mm, yes, they followed you directly into hypocrisy.”

“You mean... you mean black market beast trading? Laguz, laguz trading,” John corrects.

“Obviously. Making something illegal hardly eliminates the demand.”

“We don’t need slaves in Crimea,” John says. “Human hands build human homes.”

“Mm. Catchy propaganda.”

“It’s true,” John insists. His king may be dead, but John is still loyal regardless of the uniform he’s forced to wear. Even so, he takes care to keep his voice low. “Bill trained in Gallia. Even I had the choice to. King Ramon--”

“If you had the choice, why didn’t you go?”

“Because I was young and an idiot and I wanted to go where the fighting was,” John answers. “Bill was under strict orders to drop his weapon if conflict arose. I could never have lived like that. King Ramon wanted an end to the age of cruelty. He was a good man and a good king."

“And the slave traders did not care, John,” Sherlock replies. “It does not matter one whit how good a man your king is when coin is in the equation. All loyalty has a price, and all life has a cost. Don’t argue, not when you’ve sold yours to buy mine.”

John glares at him.

“...Thank you, by the way,” Sherlock murmurs.

John glares straight ahead instead.

“Why are you so offended?” Sherlock asks eventually.

“We don’t have slaves in Crimea,” John says. “We never have. It’s a point of national pride.” The nation may be gone, but he still has that.

“Oh, John,” Sherlock laments. He aims a pitying expression at John’s ear. “You wouldn’t know a product of slave trade if it were staring you in the face.”

“Eyes forward,” John reminds him.

Sherlock chuckles but complies.

 

They don’t make camp that night, not properly. They’re only going to march again come morning. Lying on the open ground, staring up at the canopy and the glistening water on the trees, John can almost track the motions of the guards about the perimeter of the temporary camp. The torchlight brings the droplets to shine.

John murmurs this to Sherlock, and Brian overhears.

“They look like stars,” Brian says in a whisper. “Like stars, but smaller.”

“It’s nice,” John agrees.

“Do you describe everything for him?” Brian asks.

“Only the things worth seeing,” John answers.

“Not your face, for instance,” Sherlock adds.

Brian laughs. Softly, due to the hour, but it’s a relief to hear.

John touches his hand to Sherlock’s shoulder. He knows better than to touch Sherlock’s back.

Sherlock flinches at the contact all the same.

John doesn’t lift his hand.

Eventually, Sherlock makes a small, grumbling sound.

John drops his hand and goes to sleep.

 

Near morning, Sherlock’s back presses against John’s side. Sherlock is shaking. Groggy with lack of sleep, John edges away, and Sherlock shifts after him.

John sits up and puts his hand on Sherlock’s upper arm. The shaking dies down.

John stays like that for a long time.

 

The boyish cavalier returns during the morning march. Today, he dismounts. Down on the ground, he looks a little older, if only because he’s tall. Sherlock shies into John’s side, but there’s no way to put John between them without the avoidance becoming completely obvious.

“Hello, priest,” the cavalier greets. “Do you recognise my voice?”

“And your face,” John says, voice bright, and Sherlock laughs. It’s a good sound to hear. His fitful sleep is obvious in his frame, the sharp edges of his movements sagging. He leans on John’s arm a bit more today. Theirs is a harsh pace even for John.

“I’ve been wondering,” says the cavalier. “How do you two know each other?”

“John found me in the darkness and healed my wounds,” Sherlock answers.

“Haven’t been able to lose him ever since,” John confirms.

“You’re never apart,” the cavalier half-asks.

“We’re not literally joined at the hip,” John says. “Not yet, anyway.” He smiles up at the cavalier around Sherlock.

As always, Sherlock continues to look straight ahead. “But, no, we’re never apart. John is my eyes.”

“The commander won’t humour you for long, I’m afraid,” the cavalier laments. “Two healers in a small group is always a waste of resources. Or an expectation of high losses, which is never good for morale.”

Sherlock tightens his grip on John’s arm.

“Might be for the best if you taught a few others how to lead you around,” the cavalier suggests. He puts his hand on Sherlock’s arm.

Sherlock tenses further, jerking his arm away. “Rule one,” he says. His voice is low and somehow flat. “Never touch me.”

“Sorry,” the cavalier says. “I’ll remember to ask first.”

“No,” Sherlock says. “ _Never_ touch me.”

“I’m only trying to help,” the cavalier says, laughing a little, his smile boyish and innocent.

“I don’t need your _help_.”

For a second, John is afraid Sherlock will hit the man or try to spit in his face, but from behind them:

“Sir Aston, is there a problem?” Brian calls, catching up to them and jogging around John until he’s in front of them, walking backwards.

Aston eyes Sherlock. John remembers, in a jarring sort of way, that Sherlock is a very attractive man when he’s not dying in his own filth. John guides Sherlock a bit to the side, ostensibly to let Brian fall into line with them, a human barrier between Sherlock and Aston.

“No problem at all,” Aston replies. “I was merely offering my assistance to our new priests. I’m sure it must be very limiting for you both.”

“It is the will of Ashera, who shines the light of truth into darkness,” Sherlock answers.

“Blessed is Her will,” John and Brian respond in unison.

Brian looks at Aston expectantly, and something in the lift of Sherlock’s head conveys the same sentiment.

“Blessed is Her will,” Aston agrees. “I merely wish to offer--”

“So you have,” Sherlock interrupts.

“I do hope you’ll consider it.”

“I wouldn’t want to make your horse jealous,” Sherlock replies in crisp tones. “I’m sure she’s anxious for you to mount her and have a nice, quick ride.”

There is a terrible moment where John bites his lip and prays not to laugh, where Aston visibly attempts to determine whether he was just insulted.

“Until we meet again,” Aston says at last, unfailingly cordial in tone. As instructed, he mounts his horse and trots ahead. Sherlock remains tense against John’s side even after Aston fades into the shadows. It’s hardly a comforting image for John: he can’t imagine the effect absolute darkness has on Sherlock.

“That’s trouble,” Brian mumbles.

“Is there someone we can talk to?” John asks.

“Like who?” Brian asks. “Daein may have its Four Riders, but they don’t have any Duke Renning.”

“I’ll speak with Father Jason,” John decides. “Sherlock, we should-”

“No.”

“What? Why not?”

“He’s playing a ‘friendly’ game, John,” Sherlock says. “This isn’t a battle, this is a siege, and he’s walked in claiming to be a mason. Do you understand?”

“Look, it’s a bit obvious he’s trying to remove your defences.” Me, John doesn’t say.

“I could cut your face a little,” Brian offers.

“No good,” John says. “The second he holds a staff, it would be undone.” That’s true of a real healer, and therefore must be said of Sherlock.

“Terrible haircut,” Brian suggests weakly.

“ _No_.”

John and Brian stare at him.

“No,” Sherlock repeats, this time calmly.

“I’ll talk to Father Jason,” John says.

“He’s already made too many provisions for me.”

“I can still try."

“John. No.” Sherlock turns his head, and this time, he stares at John’s cheek. “The less attention, the better.”

“I can’t guard you all hours of the day.”

“We can try,” Brian says.

Sherlock’s head jerks but doesn’t turn.

“Only if it fails with Father Jason,” John says. “I’ll make a case about vows of celibacy and keeping discipline. That kind of thing.”

“Are you lot celibate?” Brian asks.

“More of personal decision, as a rule,” John says.

“I am,” Sherlock says.

“There we are, vow of celibacy,” John says. “Father Jason’s a bishop. He’ll have to at least listen.”

 

John isn’t actually sure why he’s surprised at the response. Maybe it’s because of Brian, the combination of Daein armour and the man’s unassuming support. Maybe it’s the bits of the Daein army that don’t seem like they’re slaughtering Crimeans and chasing down girls through the forest.

Whichever the case is, John returns to Brian and Sherlock shaking with rage that night. Brian has the tent pitched, and, more importantly, he has Sherlock inside it.

“Let me guess,” Sherlock drawls. “‘If he can’t carry his weight, I’m sure he’ll be suited to other tasks.’ Oh, or ‘Daein’s army is of the strictest discipline, how dare you doubt that.’ Oh! Let’s not forget ‘Sir Aston is of an old and noble house. How dare you impugn his honour as he offers aid to the blind’.”

“Yeah,” John says. He sits heavily.

“Could be worse,” Brian says, joining them inside the low tent. He has to crouch. He pulls the flaps shut after him and whispers as he settles down on his bedroll. “Going into battle tomorrow. Always a chance Aston might have his throat ripped out.”

Sherlock closes his eyes, his mouth a thin line. John sees this without light, without looking. He simply knows Sherlock’s face.

“I won’t let him have you,” John says.

“This isn’t the Crimean army,” Brian warns. “It’s not so simple here.”

“Healers are always a valuable commodity, and I can heal myself,” John says. “I’m not afraid.” Fear is distant and strange, trapped behind his rage.

“John,” Sherlock whispers, voice unsteady, “do you shit?”

John blinks. “I’ve taken shits in front of you.”

“Then as you are, in fact, a man with an arsehole, stop talking as if you’re a man who can’t be raped. Whatever Father Jason is willing to let happen to me, he is willing to let happen to you.”

“Sherlock-”

“ _Shut up_.” Sherlock rolls over, noisy about it, and John fights down a terrible urge to reach for the man.

John lies down as well, fuming.

“Battle in the morning,” Brian murmurs after a long, painful silence. As attempts to lighten the mood go, it’s an utter failure. “Scouts say the beasts are pushing up against the other edge of the forest. Most of the soldiers were going on about how long it’s been since they’ve had a good beast hunt.”

John doesn’t reply.

For once, neither does Sherlock.

“I hear it used to be quite the Daein tradition, back when Begnion still traded in them. Nowadays, only the bluebloods can afford enough beast stock to slaughter it. Funny, the things people do for entertainme--”

“Shut up,” Sherlock whispers. “Shut up, _shut. Up._ ”

Brian shuts up.

It is a very long night.

 

“Are we fighting Crimeans?” John asks Brian, speaking quietly as the units fall into position, filing through the increasingly slim trees. Underbrush appears here and there, creeping higher the further they walk. Most is trampled down well before them, but John still takes care with Sherlock.

“Beastmen, I’d think,” Brian says. “They’ve moved the fire mages up toward the front. It’s going to get hot up there.”

John nods, throat thick. Beside him, he can feel Sherlock’s mood only growing fouler. Nothing to be done about that.

“You two should be safe,” Brian says. “There’ll be a human barrier set up for the wounded to come running in through. They’ll come to you. The soldiers will keep the beastmen away from you.”

“I have done this before,” John says. Against Daein, not with them, but the tactics are the same. Even if John used to be part of that human wall rather than a healer behind it. It’s unlikely he and Sherlock will be able to escape in the confusion, but there’s always a chance.

The trees give way to shrubbery, and they step over the already crushed foliage. The change is gradual enough to be easily missed in the tense atmosphere, but Sherlock shakes John’s arm, and when John looks at him, Sherlock squints back. John flicks his eyes forward and Sherlock does the same. The odds of escape just increased.

Light shines just ahead, but that proves to be a clearing. They keep going, and when the trees loom immediately before them, John has to tug Sherlock forward. The shadow falls, cool instead of humid with the fresh air from the clearing. Sherlock shivers beneath his hand.

They keep walking until there’s a new light. Lights. Golden sunlight and the harsh red flares of fire spells. The shouting ahead is almost orderly, and it flows back along the train of men like a wave. The vanguard has joined combat: send in the flanks.

“We’re still in the forest,” Sherlock protests.

“The beasts don’t care,” Brian answers. “This way, come on. John, keep him in formation.”

“Doing the best I can.”

The wind changes, close enough to the edge of the forest for there to be wind. After a week of stagnant, humid air, John would have thought it a blessing, were it not for the reek of charred flesh and fur. Roars echo. Snarls rip the air.

“What’s happening?” a soldier to John’s right demands. “I can’t see.”

“Oh, how terrible,” Sherlock remarks.

John pushes him forward. “Get to the tree line,” he hisses. Sherlock nods.

But the casualties begin to come in, and they expect John and Sherlock to work separately. John holds his staff with his left hand, holds Sherlock’s hand around the other staff with his right. They chant in unison, and while healing two men at once is apparently possible, it makes John’s eyes cross and his stomach heave.

It’s the spells turning his stomach, must be, not the carnage. The soldiers come with armour dented, ripped, the metal torn by claws thicker than John’s fingers. They bleed and shake, some full of bluster and others absolute terror. One man is carried to them, his arms around the shoulders of two comrades, one leg dragging. The other leg isn’t there. Too much blood gone, there’s nothing John can do.

“Life-threatening first!” John shouts. “Form a queue, the dying first!”

Sherlock stops his chanting whenever John speaks and immediately shouts something about pressing down on wounds until they can be seen to.

John resumes casting until, finally, Sherlock’s staff breaks, the red orb shattering from the strain. They drop it without calling for a new one, and John heals on his own, kneeling, Sherlock’s hands steady on his shoulders. The men seem to find something comforting in Sherlock’s stability, in his unaffected sharpness and vitriol, but John never has opportunity to hear whatever it is Sherlock is saying to them.

The men who can stand and fight do, rushing back to the front with a fervour John can understand only too well. Screams cut through the roars of beasts and blazes alike. Sherlock’s hands fist in John’s cassock.

The shout goes up: “The line is broken!”

and

“Push forward!”

and

“Fall back!”

“What in the world...?” the soldier under John’s staff asks.

John shakes his head. “I don’t--”

“Which line is broken?” Sherlock asks. “Enemy line, rush forward. Our line, retreat. Which is it?”

“I don’t—oh, _fuck_.” That’s not a surge of the wounded coming to be healed. That’s a surge of the wounded running for their lives. “Run!”

When a retreat becomes a rout, it also becomes a stampede. John drags Sherlock by the hand, sprinting back into the woods, running full out simply to keep ahead of the panicked armed charge rushing in from behind. Unencumbered by heavy armour, they outpace the heavy lancers and axe men easily, finding themselves amid archers and horsemen.

“Can you see?” John asks, gasping for air. They slow to a jog.

“Outlines,” Sherlock says, his grip on John’s hand unrelenting. “I won’t hit any trees.”

“Brilliant,” John says. “I need you to run off in a fucking panic that way. Off to the left.” Ought to be parallel to the forest edge, and that should keep the light fairly constant. John will chase him and hope the archers have more concern than shooting down deserters. If caught, they’ll blame fear and Sherlock’s inability to see.

“What, now?”

“Of course now.”

Sherlock hesitates, slowing down even more.

“Sherlock!”

Sherlock runs.

John chases after, running west.

A wave of retreating cavalry breaks upon them from the south.

“Sherlock!” John shouts. “Sherlock!”

The horses part about the trees as water around a stone. John throws himself against one thick trunk, clinging to the northern side as the horses and their riders storm past toward the safety of the woods.

“Sherlock!”

A rider circles back, unknowable behind his faceplate, and John doesn’t recognize the horse. “Take my hand!” the rider shouts. “Climb up, I’ll carry you!”

John pulls away, running west, and is nearly struck down by a panicked horse. “Sherlock!”

“Grab the priest!” someone shouts, and a foot soldier seizes John about the waist. Coordination forgotten, John’s body fights to reach rather than pull away.

“Sherlock!”

“We’ll find your friend,” the soldier promises and throws John over the back of a horse. John holds on, reflexive, and a gauntleted hand holds him down firm on the back. If John falls, he will die, stunned from impact and then trampled by hooves. John clutches to the horse as he would to his own life, holding, hoping, nearly falling off with each roll of the horse’s canter.

The horse stops in the clearing, and John slides off, shaking, muscles exhausted. A man he doesn’t know pulls him behind the line, back under the trees. Daein soldiers position themselves in the dark, a tactic that would work well against humans.

“Sherlock,” John tries to call out. Lost in the dark in Daein uniform. Sherlock.

Beneath the roars of the advancing beasts, John’s cry falls unanswered, unheard.


	4. Chapter Three: A Friend Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The battle turns to a slaughter, and Sherlock is nowhere to be found.

A soldier puts a fresh staff in his hands. The soldier tells him where to stand. A wall of heavy lancers stands ready, lances lowered, tall shields facing southward. Archers and mages stand behind them, ready to fire into the clearing. Their armour is older, better quality, and suddenly John can understand why the fierce Daein army gave in to disorder in the first charge: they were bait.

John, Sherlock, Brian, their entire unit and more. Nearly everyone John’s met. They were bait.

Roars shake the trees, and the thundering paws of the beasts shake down water from above, a false rain.

“I love this part,” says the soldier beside John, the man who came running in from the supply line. The man’s grin is audible in his voice, hidden behind his helmet.

John stares at him. “What.”

“Have you never seen this before?”

“Seen what?” John asks.

“Oh, Ashera, you’ll want to get a view! C’mere.” He beckons John northward, toward the nearest tree.

“We’re in the middle of a battle!”

Everyone around John laughs. From some, it’s nervous laughter. From others, it’s outright amusement.

John stares at all of them, and the soldier swings his axe into the side of the tree at chest height. It goes in at a slight downward slant and holds fast. The soldier offers John both hands, cupping them for a boost.

“You’ll want to see this,” the soldier promises. He sounds like a parent telling his child of a meteor shower.

“But we’re in the middle of a battle,” John says.

“No,” the soldier says. “We’re at the start of the hunt.”

John frowns. He looks back over his shoulder toward the roars, toward the tight, steady line of steel and magic, and decides to climb up. He threads his staff through the back of his sash. The soldier boosts him onto the improvised step and John holds tight to the tree, the soles of his boots sliding slightly on the flat of the axe.

He turns his face southward in time to see the beasts break into the clearing. Bill’s descriptions shrivel into mumbled words, dwarfed by the reality. The beasts charge, huge yellow cats the size of wolf hounds, the black-blue tigers yet larger. They flood the clearing in an instant, a tidal wave of savage rage.

The call sounds. “Archers ready! Mages ready!”

Too late, that call is much too late. “What the hell are they doing?” John demands down at the soldier, but the man only points toward the clearing. John keeps looking.

When the lights begin to shine, John thinks the mages have acted without orders, but for all the lights glow red and green and yellow, there are inexplicable flashes of blue as well. It starts in front, then passes over the herd of beasts, an unfurling of multicoloured light that does them no harm. Instead of being struck down by fire or wind or thunder, the beasts rise to their hind legs, still running, and become nearly human.

Humans with tails, humans with claws, humans with rage twisting their marked faces. The crush of their charging fellows slams them onto the lances, impales them. Howls and screams, but no longer the cries of animals.

“Archers, release!”

The whistling volley flies high, arching above the clearing, then falls to stab the earth and all those upon it.

“Mages, cast!”

Charred flesh and ash, and, holding tight to the rough bark of the tree, John coughs hard. He turns his face away from the heat. The haze of smoke disguises nothing. Not the writhing bodies, not the burning fur, not the tiger who, mid-leap, becomes a startled woman before falling upon a raised lance.

John climbs down from his perch. The soldier helps him.

“Why are they doing that?” John asks. “Why are they... Why are they doing that?”

“The beast form only lasts so long,” the soldier says, tugging his axe out of the tree with ease. His arms are approximately as thick as John’s legs. “Gorgeous sight, though, seeing them transform. The only bit of the Goddess in those things.”

“No, why, why are they still coming? They’re changing forms, they’re practically throwing down their weapons, _why are they doing that_?”

The soldier’s body language shifts, cheerful battle lust to concern. “Are you all right, mate?”

“They’re still coming,” John says, pointing. “They’re unarmed and running straight into the lances, why are they doing that?”

“Because they’re stupid beasts,” the soldier says. “That’s all. Get them angry, pull back, and they’ll kill themselves trying to get you. They’ll follow your scent right into any trap. It’s business as usual. First time’s a bit rough. The smell never gets any better. Burnt fur is nasty stuff.”

“They’re screaming.” John’s going to be sick.

The soldier puts one large hand on John’s shoulder. “They only sound like people. Sub-humans aren’t _real_ humans. All right?”

John closes his eyes, fighting down bile.

“All right?” the soldier asks.

John shakes his head.

“Ah well. You’ll get used to it.”

The slaughter continues, a massacre of fire and steel.

John leans hard on his staff, dizzy with the noise, with everything.

“Are you new to battle?” the soldier asks. “You sound Crimean.”

“This isn’t battle,” John whispers.

“What was that?”

“I said, my friend is out there,” John says a bit louder.

“Oh,” says the soldier. “You were in the advanced unit, weren’t you? That explains it. You’ll lose the shakes soon enough.”

A trumpet blows.

“Excuse me,” the soldier says, a grin back in his voice. “Some of the beasties are about to start changing back. Hunting time!”

John stays there behind the line, waiting for someone to speak to him, for someone to push him or press him or ask to be healed from wounds inflicted by the defenceless. No one does.

 

When there is no one left to kill, the soldier comes back. “Oi,” the soldier says, helmet in one hand. John recognizes him by voice and stature, not by the brown hair or eyes. “Oi, you. Crimea. It’s me, it’s Talbert. Come here.”

“I’m going back to camp,” John says, walking away.

“Wait,” Talbert says. “You should see this.”

“I don’t want to see anything else,” John says. “I’ve seen enough, thanks.”

Talbert catches John’s arm. His hand fits around John’s forearm with ease. “Come look. You’ll sleep better for it.”

John already knows he won’t. He follows all the same, wishing for a sword.

They go toward the west edge of the battleground. The field of slaughter. Yes, that suits it better. Field of slaughter, place of massacre. The ground is scorched, bodies burnt black. Disfigured by flame, the corpses are indistinguishable from normal humans.

Around the edge of the clearing, Daein soldiers have set to work looting corpses. What of, John can’t tell until he’s close.

“Why are they cutting the tails off?” John asks.

“Sending a message,” Talbert says. “If you want to keep a sub-human from turning beast, you cut the tail off.”

“But they’re dead.”

“Mm, and imagine what a dead and tailless army looks like to a beast king.”

John closes his eyes and clenches his fists. He doesn’t shout or punch or try to run. He opens his eyes. “Why did you want me to see this?”

“Well, look at them,” Talbert says.

John looks.

They’re clothed, which is a surprise. Their beast forms had been nude. Beast magic, must be. The clothing is light, meant for movement rather than protection, and the bloody rents in the fabric only underscore how unprepared a laguz is for battle when shaped like a human.

They look to have some sort of face paint, but when John kneels down in the soggy grass, he can see it’s part of their faces. Triangle sort of shapes, always pointing toward the mouth or nose, always a symmetrical pair of them. The patterns are closer to birthmarks than whiskers, but they remind him of whiskers all the same. The colour of each set of markings matches the laguz’s hair colour, the colour shared by their tails. Their ears are high and pointed, furred and soft-looking, like velvet.

There are women as well as men, and in about equal number. Some are big, bigger than Talbert, and those must be the tigers. They aren’t frightening, dead. They aren’t anything other than piteous.

John looks, and John looks, and he sees a laguz woman on top of a laguz man, can see how the fire hit her and not him. He was stabbed under her arm, skewered. They’re smaller laguz, cats, their hair a deep mossy green. Their faces lie turned the same way, and their markings are much alike. Their colouring, their features, their everything. Even the patches on their tunics were cut from the same cloth.

John looks at them, and he thinks _Harry_.

He begins to pray.

Aloud. He begins to pray aloud.

He glares down any soldier who stares. He prays and he closes staring eyes, starting with the siblings. He moves corpse to corpse until Talbert wraps strong fingers around John’s wrist and squeezes.

“Stop that,” Talbert tells him. “They would have killed us. I don’t care what rubbish your king fed you, Crimea. These are wild animals. If you don’t breed them in captivity, they can’t be tamed. It has to be done.”

“No,” John says. “It really doesn’t.”

Talbert backhands him.

John blocks with his staff and staggers back from the force all the same. “Hitting a priest sends you to hell,” he threatens. “Don’t you know that?”

“Walk away, Crimea.”

John takes five steps away, bends down, and closes the eyes of another laguz.

Abruptly on his back and very much in pain, John blinks up at a bloody yet familiar face. It’s not the one he was expecting. Everything spins. “That wasn’t very smart, was it?”

“Nope,” Brian says. “But I’m glad you’re alive.”

“Sherlock?” John asks immediately.

Brian returns the staff into John’s hands, a solid pressure across his chest. The red light flares on its own accord, John’s magic determined to heal its wielder.

“Has anyone seen him?” John asks.

Brian says, very quietly, “I’m glad you’re alive.”

 

While John is still woozy, Father Jason summons him.

Brian takes John to the bishop’s tent, supporting him much the way John ought to be supporting Sherlock. Brian stays outside the tent. John ventures in. He stops in the entryway, his way barred by a pair of guards.

Father Jason takes his time in looking up from papers at his desk. It’s a travelling desk, but still a sizeable piece of furniture to take on campaign. “You were the cause of a disruption today,” Father Jason says, folding both hands upon the glossy wooden surface.

“It’s all a bit of a blur, Father,” John says. “A man named Talbert struck me very hard, you see.”

“I am aware.”

John waits.

“We do not pray for the beasts, John,” Father Jason says. “Humans are worthy of the blessings of Ashera. Sub-humans, however, are beneath them. That is why they are called sub-humans.”

John says nothing.

“How do you explain your actions?”

“Have any stragglers come in?” John asks. “After the... After the battle. The people we lost track of in the retreat, are they coming in?”

Father Jason’s face remains impassive. “You explain yourself with questions.”

“Sherlock is missing,” John says. “He can’t see, and the laguz track by scent.”

“Sub-humans,” Father Jason states. “The clergy has discarded that outdated term. It was decreed from the foot of the Tower of Guidance itself. You will speak as befits your station, or you will lose it.”

John does not fist his hands. Instead, he flexes them outward. There are guards here. He cannot strike this man.

“Sherlock is missing,” he says, “and I thought... When Crimea and Daein skirmished in the past, we would exchange our dead. So they could be buried at home.” An implication is better than a lie. John’s a shit liar.

Father Jason shakes his head slowly, sombrely. “Sub-humans are not as civilised as we are, John. They will not follow your example. Your friend is lost.”

“I see,” John says.

“You return to regular duty this evening. We still have our share of the wounded.”

“Yes, sir,” John says.

“And send your cassock in for cleaning. A priest should be seen free of blood.”

John looks down at himself, at the dried red splotch over his knee where he’d knelt in blood-soaked grass. His back must be much the same way. “Yes, sir,” he says.

“You are dismissed.”

“Thank you, sir.”

He exits the bishop’s tent. Brian helps him back to their own small shelter of canvas. John lies down. Brian returns to doing whatever it is that Brian is meant to be doing.

The call for evening duty comes much too soon, but John rises all the same.

 

Two days later, they pack up camp and resume marching. John isn’t sure what direction until the tree trunks begin to grow thicker. They’re returning north.

“What was the point of that?” John demands after the first day of marching. Quietly, of course, when they don’t have the tent set up, but he still demands it.

Brian shushes him. “Just go to sleep.”

“No,” John says. “Really. What was the point of that?”

“Someone else must have caught the princess,” Brian says. “Or maybe they’ve heard the princess already left Gallia. I don’t know. I don’t expect anyone to tell me, either, ‘cause they’re not going to.”

“So we marched into Gallia, slaughtered more laguz than anyone’s bothered to count, and now we’re marching back into Crimea. Was it to make a point?” The thought has been trapped in his head, turning over and over, always in Sherlock’s voice. “What point? Is Daein trying to secure her new borders, is that the point?”

“Sorry, you lost me. What’s a laguz?”

“It’s the proper name for beastmen. And birdmen, and dragonmen.”

“Oh, like sub-human,” Brian says.

“Not quite,” John says. He rolls over. “Never mind.”

 

They pack. They march. They stop. They unpack. They rest.

They do it all again in the morning.

The stink grows day by day as mould takes hold in their cloth, as rust stains their metal, as maggots wriggle in their supplies. They abandon their waste with each camp, so much shit and piss set off to the side in freshly dug latrines. Eventually, they camp in the same location the army has stopped before, and the latrines are full and reeking. John thinks of Sherlock and the sandals the Daeins made him discard, and he can more than understand why. The only sanitation Daein is good at centres around shit.

John learns his old cassock was torn into bandages, and his new one is a faded grey. He nearly argues that bloodstained cloth shouldn’t be put anywhere near another person’s wound, but then he remembers he wants these men dead. He’s not sure what to do with the guilt of inaction, simply knows he hates it less than he would the regret of acting. When soldiers begin to die of infection faster than Father Jason can order men to heal them, John is sure to remind himself of this.

 

The scouts range north and south, searching ahead and scouring their trail for signs of pursuit. The southward teams are the only ones John ever need see to. They return bloody and shaken time and time again, and the army’s rear guard swells in numbers as a result.

“Beasts still chasing us,” Brian grumbles. “Damn persistent things.”

“Well,” John says, “we did kill their families.”

“Huh,” Brian says. “That’s a lot of loyalty for animals. No, I think it’s a territorial instinct.”

John and Brian speak less to each other by the day.

 

An army is a slow, plodding creature, sprawling and uncoordinated after growth spurts or injuries. It takes well over two weeks, nearly three, to cover the same ground it had taken John a week to cross in the opposite direction.

John thinks as he walks, as he packs, as he unpacks, as he heals. Bill and Mike should be fine in Gallia, though Molly is probably panicking at every laguz she happens across. He hopes Bill kept the horse. Bill isn’t himself without a horse.

When his mind isn’t in Gallia, it’s on Crimea’s border with Begnion. Harry might be there. He hopes Harry is there. Harry and Clara both, running into Begnion. Surely Begnion will accept refugees. Especially women. Harry might be a better hand with a sword than John is, but Clara’s life is one spent behind a counter, measuring out pounds of corn and flour. Her life was that, he means. Maybe Clara will find a new shop. Maybe Clara will set up business and Harry will stand guard over the till. It’s a nice thought, if not a realistic one.

Some days, he wonders about the princess. Who she is, if she’s authentic. If she’s even a real woman, let alone a real princess: she seems more mist and rumour than fact. He smiles a bit at the thought. A lie from the conquered countryside whispered into the right ear, and the Daein army runs about in circles after a woman who doesn’t exist. She would be a grown woman by now, wouldn’t she? It was the thirtieth year of King Ramon’s reign, for all he took the throne young.

He thinks of everyone he’s ever loved, more or less. It’s a detached sort of wondering, a question with an unknowable answer: are they still alive? There are so many John will never see again, would have never seen again anyway. Are they dead? Are they fled, or captured, or forced into service?

He tries not to think of the women. He’s courted more than a few girls who have grown into swordswomen, not to mention one extremely memorable sniper, but fighting isn’t always the service an army wants from its women. Crimea was all right with its own, Daein might even be all right with its own, but certainly not with citizens of its conquered foe.

He tries not to think of Sherlock as well, but his habits remind him. He holds out his arm. He grips his staff below the orb and waits for someone to take hold behind him. He keeps waiting, and waiting, for a tug on the hood of his robe.

His body will move and wait, and then his mind will remember. He’ll see Sherlock running into the shadows on John’s order, and he’ll see the way Sherlock’s arms cover his head as the panicked horses side-blind him.

One night, he dreams of a normal day, just a normal day in the uneasy trudge that is the Daein army. Except this time, he knows Sherlock is safe, knows Bill was on one of those horses and Bill swept Sherlock up and rode away with him. Bill couldn’t come back for John, but that’s no matter. John can survive. John will survive, and Sherlock is alive in Gallia, safe.

In the morning, he wakes disoriented for no reason he can name. It’s not until his tired legs ache with marching that he remembers. Bill wasn’t there. Sherlock was lost, one man who could barely see. A man in Daein uniform, a man who never stripped in a tent with friends, let alone in a forest full of enraged laguz.

Heat jabs behind John’s eyes, and John marches on with them shut.

 

The day the army reaches the northern edge of the Sea of Trees, John follows routine and waits in position to heal the rear scouts upon their return. He waits a bit longer than usual, and then a lot longer. The soldiers around him grow restless. It’s nearly time to stop for the night, and the scouts have never had trouble returning before the forest reaches true dark.

Then in the distance: the pounding of hooves.

John sees them between the trees, the four men he expects, the four horses he knows by sight. The man in the lead, Richard, shouts to him.

John shakes his head and cups his ear, unable to hear the man over the horses’ strides.

“Beasts to the west!” Richard shouts. “They’re going for the supply train! Make way, let us through!”

The soldiers beside John part way immediately, and John steps to the side with them. Four horses thunder past, four horses and five riders, one in torn red and clinging to a cavalier’s back.

John chases after, a hopeless task on foot and in robes. He hikes them up and runs regardless, following in the wake of the riders. A shout goes up, and goes up, and goes up, and men fall into position, weapons in hand, armour still upon their shoulders from the day’s march. They head west, following three of the riders, but not the fourth and fifth.

The overburdened horse turns right, not left, making for the commander’s tent with trotting haste. The guards greet them, and the fourth rider dismounts. The fifth simply falls to the ground and lies there.

John is at his side in an instant, staff at the ready.

“Don’t-! Don’t touch me!”

“It’s me,” John says, catching the man’s wrist as he tries to push John away. “Sherlock, it’s me. It’s John.”

Sherlock stops struggling. “ _John_.” He gapes up at him through his personal darkness, chest heaving. His eyes roam across John’s face, around it, above his head, and John puts a careful hand on his shoulder to show Sherlock where he is. Sherlock sits up, gripping John by the arms.

John marvels at him. More wasted than ever before, his cassock missing and under robe half-ruined, but the man is no illusion. The patches of skin left unhidden by dirt or the beginnings of a beard are paler than remembered. “You’re alive.”

Sherlock coughs with the rasp of a parched throat. “Obviously.”

“How are you alive?”

“By not being dead, one would assume. Simple process of--” He coughs hard. “Process of elimination.”

Behind Sherlock and the horse, Father Jason exits the commander’s tent, the fourth rider at his side. The cavalier still wears his helmet, but the dappled gelding means he must be Edmund.

“You,” Father Jason says in surprise, looking down at them. At Sherlock, at the two-man unit that is John and Sherlock together.

“Is that Father Jason?” Sherlock rasps. Sitting on the ground with his back to the bishop, Sherlock doesn’t so much as turn his head.

“Yes,” John says. “Now stop talking, you sound terrible.”

“I’d much rather you start talking,” Father Jason disagrees.

Sherlock tilts his head. “Sir?”

“Sir Edmund tells me the baggage train is in danger. The advance warning will of course make repelling the beasts a simple feat. Sir Edmund tells me the warning came from you.”

“I heard the horses and screamed early,” Sherlock says. “They were bringing me east. A distraction in the east means an attack from the west, doesn’t it?”

A pause, Father Jason looking down at the top of Sherlock’s head, at the way Sherlock sags toward John. “Pick him up,” Father Jason commands Edmund. “Bring him inside.”

Sherlock reaches for John, an arm slipping easily around John’s shoulders. “I can lean, sir,” Sherlock reports.

John staggers up under Sherlock’s weight but stabilises. Sherlock’s legs shake with every step, but when Edmund moves forward to share the burden of Sherlock’s unsteady frame, Sherlock flinches away into John’s side.

There are two chairs in the tent, one of which folds, and the folding chair is the one John deposits Sherlock in. He stands at Sherlock’s side, staff set into the floor of the tent, and Sherlock grips the smooth length of metal in one trembling hand. Edmund follows inside and the guards shut the tent flaps. The small lamp on the desk is little enough light that Sherlock will not have to feign blindness.

“‘They’,” Father Jason says. “‘They’ were bringing you east.”

Sherlock nods. “Yes. The beasts.”

John frowns, then immediately schools his expression smooth.

“But I told you, I screamed early. They were, um. They were arguing. About how far humans could hear. They wanted to be close enough to the main camp that... Well, that I could be heard. And we’d set off northeast, our path perpendicular to that of the main beast force. Northwest. They wanted to draw your eyes to the east, attack in the west.”

“I understand basic strategy,” Father Jason remarks, voice bland. “The beasts typically don’t.”

“They understand hunting,” Sherlock answers. “That’s enough to lay a trap.”

Father Jason nods slowly. “They caught you after the battle,” he prompts, then signals to one of his guards to fetch Sherlock something to drink. The guard goes where indicated, and John is pleased to see it’s wine, not beer. Sherlock can never stomach beer.

“I was lost,” Sherlock says. His voice breaks with exhaustion, not emotion. “John and I were running from the rout, but the cavalry nearly trampled us. I fell and crawled to a tree. I don’t know how long I stayed there. I didn’t dare move.”

The guard returns, cup in hand, and John takes it from him before pressing it into Sherlock’s hand. “Thank you,” Sherlock murmurs. He drinks before continuing:

“When I heard voices, I called out to them. It seemed the obvious thing to do. They came. I remember they went quiet when they saw me.” Sherlock frowns. “When they asked if I was blind, I thought they were a part of the army I hadn’t met. Again, it seemed the obvious answer. They talked amongst themselves, and then one offered his arm. We walked south. I thought Daein had pushed forward and assumed we would be rejoining the main force. I didn’t realise what they were and where they had taken me until we were near their camp.

“The beastmen there were in reserve. Scouts to report to their king, I believe. They kept talking about tails. Lost tails. I’m not sure what that was about. I never tried to check if they still had their own: I didn’t want to be killed.

“They wanted to kill me anyway, of course, but the beastman who had guided me in wouldn’t let them. He said...” Sherlock clears his throat. “He said humans might not have tails, but they can still be carved up.”

John’s hands move of their own volition on the staff, and Sherlock catches them. “I’m fine,” Sherlock says. “It’s all right.”

Unembarrassed, John pulls away.

“They put me in a cage,” Sherlock continues. “For the irony, I think. I stayed there for what I believe was two weeks. They never pressed for information, and I never volunteered any.

“The wait was for their reinforcements. I don’t know the size of their army, only that it was extremely loud. Even when silent. There isn’t a precise noise when a tiger stares at you, but I don’t know what else to call it. That was very loud.”

“More about their numbers later,” Father Jason instructs. “Tell me of their movements.”

“Northward,” Sherlock answers. “They were very rushed. They’re after revenge and know they’ll never have it if Daein shelters in a stone fort. Some of them couldn’t seem to understand the idea of a foe who wouldn’t take the field against them.”

A general chuckle arises in the room. Neither John nor Sherlock laugh. John covers his lack of amusement by setting his hand on Sherlock’s shoulder. It’s concern, nothing more.

“They want to slow the Daein army,” Sherlock continues. “They’ll break themselves on stone walls if we can reach them. Whatever beast is in charge does know that. This morning, he sent out three beasts to take me eastward. From what they discussed around me, the original plan was to use me if they couldn’t stop you from holding up in a fort. They underestimated your speed.”

“They revealed their plans to you?” Father Jason asks, eyebrow arched.

“They--” Sherlock swallows. “They taunted me, actually.”

Father Jason nods. “How did they plan to use you?”

“They would challenge you to face them. If you refused, they would bring me into sight, well out of range of your archers, and then kill me slowly.” Sherlock closes his eyes, his head turned slightly down and toward John. “They were convinced it would enrage you enough to take the field.”

“They grow more savage by the year,” Father Jason murmurs.

A tap comes at the heavy canvas door flaps, and the outer guard pulls back the fabric to announce, “Sir, the attack on the supply train was successfully turned away. They were after the wagons, not the men. They ran off when the mages arrived.”

“Our losses?”

“Three men, two wagons. About seventeen wounded, nine requiring magic,” comes the report from behind the outer guard. John recognises Richard’s voice. The southward patrol has a number of extra duties tonight, it would seem.

“Very well.” Father Jason’s eyes flick to John. “Go with him.”

Hand on Sherlock’s shoulder, John hesitates.

“Do I need to repeat myself?”

“No, sir.”

Staff in hand, eyes set determinedly ahead, John exits the tent.

 

“It was three cats,” Richard says as they walk. The cavalier brings Edmund’s horse with them on a lead. “A brown, a black, and a blue. All standing upright when we found them. And they weren’t hurting him. Not yet anyway – it was obvious they were about to, though.”

“But they weren’t transformed, you said.” John isn’t questioning the truth of the statement, merely the specifics, and the cavalier takes no offence.

“Even when they look like people, they still have those claws,” Richard says. “They had him tied, hands bound. He was on a lead. They were making him run behind them when transformed.”

“Ashera.”

“Ghastly thing to do to anyone, let alone a man who can’t see,” Richard agrees.

John nods, stomach twisting.

“I’m glad we could get him back for you.”

“What?”

“Your friend,” Richard says.

“Yes,” John says. “I mean, _yes_ , Goddess, yes. I—I mean. Yes. Thank you. All of you. Are Brandon and Thom all right?”

“The idiots are fine. The louts and I charged in with lances ready and sent them running. Edmund’s ribs might be a bit bruised, though, the way your mate held on.”

John laughs, a breathless, shaky sound.

“Brother John?”

“I’m fine,” John says. “No, I am, I’m fine.”

Richard eyes him, then nods. “Right then. Let’s patch the boys up. The Father might be done with your friend by the time we’re through. And by we, I naturally mean you. I need to get this beastie rubbed down before he catches cold.” Richard pats the horse’s neck.

“His name’s Sherlock,” John says.

“No, this is Prancer. Oh, you mean your mate?”

“Yeah. Sherlock. He’s from Begnion, but he’s really cynical about it. Disillusioned with the Senate, I think. And the people burnt down a holy forest about twenty years ago. He didn’t like that either.” The words spill out in a rush, falling over each other like the pages of a tome, flipped through too quickly. “Authority problems everywhere and he gets into trouble, but he’s a good man, and I just. I. I can’t stop talking, I’m not sure why.”

Richard shakes his hand. “If someone took Edmund...”

“We’re not,” John says. “He and me, we’re not like you two.”

“Brothers in prayer, brothers by the sword,” Richard says. “I don’t see much difference.”

“Oh,” John says, and thinks of Mike. Except John has had Mike by prayer and Bill by sword, and Sherlock is something else entirely. “I suppose, that way,” he agrees anyway. “Nine needing me, you said?” That shouldn’t take too long. Maybe Father Jason will be finished with Sherlock by the time John heals the last.

“Nine,” Richard confirms, leading Edmund’s gelding away. “And it’s a bit urgent, so you might want to hurry!”

“Right, sorry!”

Today, for the first day in weeks, John does hurry. Today, there’s reason to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Now with fanart! FE style portraits for Sherlock and John by [Runick](runick.tumblr.com), both [in color](http://runick.tumblr.com/post/35495473993/sherlock-and-john-fire-emblem-style-they-are) and [without](http://runick.tumblr.com/post/35498920065/i-feel-as-though-my-coloring-skills-are-devolving).


	5. Chapter Four: Besieged

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Reaching the relative safety of an old outpost, the Daein army prepares for a siege against their pursuers.

Sherlock shaves with steady hands. When they shake, he stops. John tells him where he’s missed a spot. He refrains from pointing and does not touch.

“Your hair needs trimming, too,” John adds. “They’ve a team of barbers. I think one of them is even good, if you can believe it.”

“It’s fine,” Sherlock says, running his fingertips over the contours of his cheeks. He nods and hands the closed razor to John.

“Thanks.” John shaves with the cooling water, and the resulting sting is somewhere between irritant and refreshment. As John scrapes his stubble away, Sherlock doesn’t speak.

John cleans up and returns Brian’s shaving kit to the man’s pack. Over a month living beside Brian and John no longer asks to borrow it. Unfortunate enough to pull latrine duty, Brian won’t be back for some time yet. John pulls the tent flap shut.

“So,” John says.

Sherlock doesn’t so much as shift in the dark.

“Did you try to tell them you aren’t Daein?”

Sherlock sighs. “While dressed as one? Reeking of the army?”

John turns his head and surreptitiously sniffs the shoulder of his own cassock. “Even saying you were impressed, though?”

“Would it matter?” Sherlock asks. “When they first came upon us, if Brian had been one of the soldiers, would you have stopped to ask where he was from?”

“No,” John admits. He thinks it over a while longer. “Strange how that works.”

“What, killing people?”

“No. Well, yes, sort of,” John says. “We spend so much time making a fuss over who’s what, but in the end, it only comes down to what side you’re acting on at the moment.”

“That’s never occurred to you before?”

“Not this blatantly, no,” John says. “Things were a bit clearer cut on the eastern border. That’s Daein, this is us, and those are the towns that keep changing hands. Even for the confusion, you were sure where it belonged. But here? No.”

Sherlock says nothing, but the weight of his eyes presses against John’s skin. It’s incredible how he can do that.

“What?” John asks.

“You haven’t tried to run.”

“Not after how the last time went, no,” John says. “And I’d need to get other clothes first, preferably a coat. A sword would be nice. But I didn’t know how I could make it back to the border on my own.”

Sherlock’s silence is very loud.

“What?” John demands. “You think I’ve thrown my lot in with them, is that it?”

“You’re still here, aren’t you?”

John stares at him, at the grey outline of the man. “Fuck you,” he says and stands.

Sherlock flinches.

“They took you alone, do you remember that? I could have gone off with my friends and Molly, but no, I let Daein take me. I didn’t throw in my lot with _them_ , you arse.”

“John--”

“No. Fuck you.” He opens the tent flap.

“Where are you going?”

“Dinner,” John snaps. He steps outside and flings the tent flap shut. He takes two steps, stops, turns around and comes back. He sticks his head into the tent. “Do you want any?”

“What?”

“Food. Do you want any.”

“I’m staying in the tent,” Sherlock says, as if John doesn’t know Sherlock hides away after having a fright.

“I didn’t ask you to come, you tit, I asked if you wanted any.”

“Yes.”

“Fine.” John storms off.

 

When John returns, he does not throw the biscuit or jerky at Sherlock. It’s control for the sake of control, not self-image. Brian still isn’t back, which means he’ll be positively reeking tonight. There’s no one to judge John here except for Sherlock, and it’s certain he will anyway.

“Here,” John says.

“Thank you.”

John sits. He decides to tug off his boots and go to sleep. He lies down and listens to Sherlock chew.

Once John’s begun to drift, Sherlock murmurs, “You’re still angry.”

Just like that, John is furious. “Shut it.”

“You’re that afraid I think your loyalties have shifted.”

“What? No.”

“Compelled obedience is not loyalty, John. And fondness for the servants is hardly fondness for the master.”

John fumes a bit in silence.

“I’m not wrong.”

“No, but could you stop reading my mind?”

“...Ah. Self-doubt, so you take it out on me.”

“Look, I’m not--” John cuts himself off. He sits up. “Sherlock,” he says.

“Yes?”

“I thought you were dead. I’m glad you’re alive.”

Sherlock audibly blinks.

“All right?” John demands.

“Yes,” Sherlock says, the word almost tentative.

“But if we can’t trust the laguz to let us live, we can’t exactly turn to them for shelter. We’re heading back to Crimea, and if we fight there, they’ll want me healing the soldiers who are killing my countrymen, and I can’t do that. When there’s no chance of them killing anyone I know, sure, fine, I can live with that. I’ll have to live with that. But I can’t help them hurt my own people.”

“They’ll kill you,” Sherlock reminds him.

“I know,” John says. “So I’m sorry.”

Sherlock tilts his head. “I’m not sure what you mean.”

“If I refuse to heal, that means you won’t heal anyone either. I know that’s both of us dead on my morals, but I can’t do anything else. So I’m sorry.” Hell of a thing, for Sherlock to survive the past month only to be killed on John’s account.

“...And this is why you’re angry,” Sherlock pieces together.

“Yes,” John says. He can feel Sherlock studying him by sound and unnamed senses, the natural awareness of where a nearby friend keeps his limbs.

“You’re a very strange man,” Sherlock eventually concludes.

“No,” John says. “Just a loyal one.”

“As I said,” Sherlock repeats, “a very strange man.”

John exhales a sound that might be a laugh. They sit in a different sort of silence.

“I thought you were dead, too,” Sherlock murmurs.

“Well,” John says. “That would have been shit.”

Sherlock smiles: John can hear it.

Brian chooses that moment to return. Both of them gag immediately.

John coughs. “Speaking of shit.”

“Sherlock!” Brian exclaims.

“Ugh, go away.”

Brian laughs, Sherlock holds his nose, and John starts giggling uncontrollably. Stress or relief, there’s no telling. All he knows is that he’s happy now, the happiest he’s been in a month, and it’s not about to last.

 

The trees thin, and the underbrush thickens. The light grows, and the humidity lessens. Sherlock keeps the cassock hood up at all times, wearing it pulled down to his nose. John begins to regret not simply explaining Sherlock’s terrible night vision from the start, but it’s a bit late to come clean now.

Sherlock is off duty as it is. He walks with John during the day’s march and retreats to Brian’s tent the moment it’s set up. Occasionally, Father Jason will summon him back to the bishop’s tent for further questioning, and Sherlock takes to breaking down and trembling every time someone besides John tries to escort him. The first time, John had been close enough to hear the panicked screaming on his own. It can’t be said the Daein army doesn’t learn from its mistakes: when John arrives the second time, there is no one trying to hold Sherlock down while he screams not to be touched. They’ve simply left him on the ground, huddled and shaking, and they stare down at him in a tight ring of heavily armoured confusion.

“Everyone step back!” John orders.

They do, too well-trained to resist a command from a priest.

“Farther! Step back and look away. He knows you’re looking at him.”

On the forest floor, Sherlock continues to shake, arms wrapped around himself, body curled, face turned against the ground. John kneels down well over an arm’s length away. “Sherlock,” John whispers, and Sherlock’s trembling turns to gasping tears. John talks him through it until Sherlock is breathing steadily, almost silently. When ready to move on, Sherlock tugs down his hood nearly to his mouth.

The sight is always bewildering enough to hold off pity. The need for action is clear, blatantly obvious, but the loss of control is so contrary to everything Sherlock is that John can’t help but wonder if there’s some exaggeration to it.

Each time he wonders, he remembers where they met and his insides turn cold. Whatever the beasts have done to Sherlock, it was Daein soldiers who began this. For all John knows, those same Daein soldiers might be in this very camp.

John realises he has no idea how Sherlock manages to sleep at night. Fitfully, of course fitfully. The first three nights with Sherlock back, the third night bringing them out of the Sea of Trees, Sherlock tosses and turns. When he knocks against John, he always freezes and pulls in on himself. John wants to think it’ll be better once they’ve reached the fort ahead—only a day or two to go, one if they hurry—but putting Sherlock in a dark stone building with as many tense Daein soldiers as will fit is an obviously terrible idea.

He speaks to Father Jason about it in the only way the bishop might be receptive toward hearing. More simply put, he blames all the terrors on the beastmen and claims Sherlock should have a belt for practical beast-fleeing reasons. His trousers are meant for a much wider man.

“It’s not part of the uniform,” Father Jason answers.

“No one can see a belt under the cassock, sir,” John points out. “Incidentally, as we are part of your army, I do believe we are entitled to some form of compensation. As I’m aware that cash funds are running low, I am willing to take my first month’s wages in the form of a sturdy belt. I am also aware that this is well less than is actually due us, but am willing to make do in this time of conflict.” He smiles, very politely, and knows he’d never have been able to get away with this as a simple swordhand.

The new belt is extremely sturdy. John has to enlist a spot of help to punch more holes in it. By the time he returns to Sherlock, the man is agitated and close to trembling even in Brian’s tent. Having chased Brian out yet again, Sherlock sits with his hood down for once. John dumps the belt into his lap.

“This is... Oh,” Sherlock realises. “How did you...? What did you trade?”

“No, that was my wages,” John says. “Getting captured negated your wages. I still say that’s a rubbish lie.”

Sherlock’s hands go still upon the leather.

“We’re going to die soon, so I don’t see the point in saving up,” John says.

Sherlock stares at him.

“Look, I’m being realistic,” John says. “I’m sorry, but I am.”

“There are so many other things,” Sherlock says.

John frowns. “Sorry?”

“There’s an entire market trailing the army,” Sherlock says, as if this is something John wouldn’t know after life as a soldier. “Where do you think Brian runs off to?”

John shrugs. “They don’t have anything I want.”

“Nothing?” Sherlock asks.

“As tempting as it is, I don’t want to be drunk right now,” John says.

“There’s more than just drink, John.”

“Gambling enough as it is already, thanks.”

Though John must only appear as a vague outline, Sherlock continues to watch him. His mouth is in a strange shape.

“And,” John says, looking to the side and clearing his throat, “well. This never leaves this tent, all right? But I’m shit at prostitutes.”

Sherlock’s gaze does not waver.

“It’s not like normal sex. What’s that joke? If you want a prostitute to enjoy sleeping with you, don’t snore. I know they need the coin, but I can’t help but feel like I’m being annoying at best. I’d rather not pay for crap sex.”

Sherlock’s expression does not change, but something turns distant behind his eyes.

“I mean,” John amends, “I’d rather not the crap sex. At all. Once you’ve had it good, it doesn’t make much sense to have anything else. So if the last time was the last time I’ll ever have, I’m fine with that. Not with the dying bit, mind you. But I’m not left wanting, if that’s what you’re worried about.” By now awkward to the point of retreating, John gets up and reaches toward the tent flap. “If the belt still doesn’t have enough holes it in, I’ll have it fixed a bit more, all right?”

“Where are you going?”

“Outside. So you can change. If you want. I mean you don’t have to.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Stop tiptoeing, John.”

John settles back down. “I’m trying not to.”

Sherlock threads the belt through his trouser loops. He manages it under his robes, and he doesn’t gripe at John when John looks away. “The belt is fine,” he says instead.

“Good,” John says.

They sit for a bit.

“When they’ve tried to take you without me,” John says, not quite a question.

“I’m teaching them not to do that,” Sherlock replies. “They need to learn we can’t be separated.”

“I think they’ve gotten the message.”

“Mm.”

 

That night, when Sherlock tosses and turns, he doesn’t flinch away.

 

The next day, they reach the fort. It’s musty and old, a border marker between Gallia and Crimea that has never known true conflict. The Daein army is too large to fit inside in its entirety, not for a living situation. Priority is given according to rank and magic capability.

“See you, Brian,” John says. “Keep safe.”

“You too,” Brian says. They clasp hands. “Sherlock, you’ll be all right in there. Just you and John mind the knights.”

“We will,” Sherlock confirms.

John nods. There’s absolutely no question as to that. Stone walls block more sound than canvas ever could. They’ll also withstand any beast attack, which is why the men outside have begun to look rather nervous and rather expendable. Those camp followers who remain have already taken up a position to the north, keeping the army between themselves and the border with Gallia. It’s clearly not where the Daein army had intended to stop, much too small, but there’s no other fort they could reach within a week, and they do not have a week.

Brian offers his hand to Sherlock, and Sherlock pretends not to notice. It’s easy enough for him with hood pulled low.

“Sherlock,” John prompts.

Sherlock takes John’s arm.

Brian gives John an apologetic smile, then fruitlessly directs the same at Sherlock. He drops his hand, and there they part.

 

The barracks is large, the cots are musty, and the air is full of dust. Everyone is put to work throughout the fort, and John and Sherlock find themselves in the mages’ armoury, sorting tomes. John would like to think it a mark of trust, except it’s obvious that neither he nor Sherlock can cast from books. They are not allowed to touch the offensive staves for sleep and silence. No, this duty is no mark of trust.

“Full fire,” John says, handing the next from the pile to Sherlock. Sherlock sets the books in stacks upon the table, rows by elements, columns by freshness of power. “Half wind. About two thirds wind.”

If the mages in charge of sorting staves think to wonder why Sherlock can’t sense the magic in the books for himself, they never ask. John worries until the mages adopt John’s method of calling and passing. Hopefully, Daein will always chalk their oddities up to efficiency.

The walls are draughty, which explains Sherlock’s eternally worn hood. Once, in a rare moment alone, they test whether Sherlock can convincingly fake blindness when his sight is unhindered, and the answer is an emphatic no. Weeks without, he’s much too desperate for sight.

Beyond being indoors, very little changes. The army is still restless, though now cordoned off from itself. Sherlock still trembles if John ever leaves him alone, so John never does, not willingly. They take their pisses together, which is hardly anything unusual. “John’s stream tells me where to aim,” Sherlock claims when asked. “I don’t want to touch that bucket.”

Three days into their stay, the outworks are well underway. The sloping remains of a glacis are added to, the ditch between the glacis and the fort dug deeper. There’s call for spikes, but that means trees and carving. The process is slow.

Once off-duty, Sherlock tugs John after him up to the top of the fort. They stand with their hands on the battlement. “Describe it for me,” Sherlock says needlessly, facing into the wind and letting the breeze tug back his hood. The sun will set soon, but there’s still enough light even for him.

“The south is well-covered,” John says, very much aware of the watchman up there with them. “Most of the protection has gone into defending the men stationed outside. The glacis would probably force off humans—steep run up, hell of a fall into that ditch—but a tiger laguz would probably be able to use it as a ramp to jump over the ditch entirety. Unless they put those spikes in there, that’s going to be trouble. The wood is going to the camps, though. Some fences, more spikes. Really, they’re very big on spikes down there.

“It’s a bit obvious this fort was never meant for defending a large scale assault,” John adds. “Crimea has a long history of peace with Gallia. I don’t think we’ve ever been at war with them. This is more of a military outpost. It’s for peacekeeping in the surrounding countryside. Most of Crimea’s forts are.”

“Do you think they’ll be ready when Gallia advances?” Sherlock asks.

“I don’t know,” John says. “Daein’s laguz tactics revolve around bait, retreat and waiting for them to change back. The men outside don’t have much to retreat to. I know some of them are meant to come inside when the attack comes, but how many actually do will depend on coordination at the time. One panic at the postern, a door gets left open, laguz get inside, and we lose the entire ward, if not the fort. Daein’s discipline is generally good. Most of the ones we lost in the rout where the ones who broke and ran in the first place. That took care of most of the fresh recruits. The rest of them are out there, except for us and the archers.”

Sherlock nods. Hands on the merlons, body between them, he leans forward into the breeze and closes his eyes.

“Sherlock?”

“I haven’t felt fresh air in...” Sherlock shakes his head. “Too long.”

John frowns.

Sherlock leans a bit further over the edge.

“Enough of that,” John says, and tugs him back by the shoulder.

Sherlock looks at him sharply, then remembers himself. He settles for shoving off John’s hand. John looks over his shoulder at the watchman, but the bloke isn’t looking their way.

“What?” Sherlock asks.

“Look, it’s a bit of a drop, all right?”

Sherlock grins the way he does when he thinks someone is an idiot. It’s his usual grin. “Is it?”

“Yes,” John says.

Sherlock laughs.

“It’s not really that funny.”

“It is, actually.”

John shakes his head, looking out across the camp, across the ditch and glacis, and to the stumps where trees stood only days before. The cover for laguz decreases by the day. John supposes he should have some sort of opinion about that, something along the lines of “Good, I don’t want to die,” but nothing is forthcoming. He hopes he’ll be allowed to stay inside when the carnage begins again. That’s the extent of it.

“John?”

“Hm?”

Sherlock hesitates. “We can go in. If it’s too cold for you.”

John realises he’s hugging himself about the middle. He forces his arms down. “No, I’m. I’m fine.”

As if bent on proving him wrong, the wind blows a bit harder. Sherlock smiles into it, eyes closed, blissful as the wind plays with his hair. His hair is in absolute disorder, curly and wild here, matted and greasy there. He inhales deeply, chest rising with satisfaction.

“We can stay out a bit longer,” John says, looking away.

“Mm.”

The sun drifts lower. They might be missing dinner by now.

“How do you think the laguz will attack?” Sherlock asks.

“Probably all at once,” John says. “They might get through the outworks—I’d be surprised if they didn’t—but they’re going to break themselves on the fort.”

Sherlock hums agreement. “How would you do it?”

“Sorry?”

“How would you do it?” Sherlock repeats. “If you were a laguz general.”

“Waves,” John says immediately. “If there’s a time limit on the transformations, it’s the only thing that makes sense. A wave charges as beast, behind that come men, and they transform once they’ve reached our line.”

“Risky. Archers and mages, John.”

“Human instinct. If you’re being charged by something about to kill you, why focus on something that isn’t? And you realise there are such things as shields.”

“Shields?”

“Those metal and wood things,” John says. “They’re not just for show.”

“That’s hardly good against fire.”

“Animal hides soaked in water,” John says. “Simple. They must hunt, so they must have animal skins. That’s common sense stuff. Light wooden shield with wet animal skins, maybe some netting for arrows. They could come running in under those, then sling them over their backs and transform. After fighting up front, they’d have a shield to hide behind once they changed back, at least for a few minutes.”

Sherlock shakes his head.

“Why wouldn’t that work?” John asks.

“Laguz don’t stop fighting, John. It’s not in... It’s not in them.”

“So they’re going to keep doing stupid things that get them killed.”

Sherlock’s lips quirk.

John frowns at him. “Ashera, you’re morbid today.”

The shade of a smile fades. “Not today,” Sherlock says, eyes fixed on the horizon. “The breeze is too pleasant.” He starts to lean out again, out and over the edge.

John grips his sleeve at the elbow.

“What?”

“I’d rather you not fall to your death, that’s all,” John says. “I prefer you alive, generally speaking.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my balance.” He leans out a bit farther, tugging his sleeve away from John’s hand.

“Can you not do that please?” It’s hardly Sherlock’s balance John is worried about.

Sherlock doesn’t respond, eyes closed.

“Sherlock. Please don’t.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Please don’t leave me alone.”

Sherlock opens his eyes. He pulls back from the edge, and John fights down the urge to tug him away, drag him back to the stairs. He would if touching Sherlock wouldn’t make him worse. That had come on much too suddenly.

“Thank you,” John says instead.

Guilt sits poorly upon Sherlock’s features. It doesn’t know how to fill his eyes and keeps spilling down to his mouth.

“Thank you,” John says again.

The guilt fills Sherlock’s face entirely.

“If you,” John says, and swallows. “If you need to kill yourself, I won’t fault you for it, but can you please wait until after they kill me? Or right before. Around that time. Will you wait?”

“I’m not going to kill myself.”

John sighs out relief. “Thank you.”

“No, John, I mean it. I’m not—that wasn’t.” Sherlock gestures to the parapet, to the air. He visibly searches for words. “I’m too angry to kill myself.”

“Good,” John says. “Me too.”

Sherlock looks at him long and hard, and then he pulls his hood back up.

They go inside.

 

“What’s Begnion like?” John asks that night. It’s two to a cot, everyone doubled up, and restless murmurs are as familiar as the scurrying of rats.

“Hm?”

“You were born in Begnion.”

“I was, ah. Conceived,” Sherlock replies. “My brother, he was. He was born there.”

“Your parents moved around?”

“My mother, yes. After Father was killed, she never felt safe in Begnion again.”

“I’m sorry,” John whispers.

Sherlock’s breath is warm against his forehead.

John closes his eyes and tries to sleep.

“It’s hateful,” Sherlock murmurs. “A veneer of peace and harmony over centuries of corruption. The senators can’t be trusted, and the Apostle has never heard the voice of the Goddess.”

The bottom of John’s stomach drops out. “You mean the current one. Because she’s too young.”

Sherlock says “yes” but he doesn’t say so immediately.

John feels a bit sick. It’s strange, the simple act of feeling. His emotions are something on the other side of a wall, out of sight and nigh beyond hearing. He can hear them crying but can’t make out the words.

“The buildings are tall.”

“What?” John whispers.

“In Begnion,” Sherlock whispers. “The buildings are immense in the capital.”

John lies very still. “Go to sleep.”

They do.

 

It’s a bad spot they’ve holed up in. The wells went dry on the third day, John hears on the morning of the fourth. No amount of hushing can keep that news from spreading. When water goes, life follows, and most of their potable drink was consumed in the forest.

As the word spreads, tension reaches breaking point after breaking point. Fights break out among the men. When John is sent in to handle disputes, Sherlock makes the majority of them worse. There’s a scuffle down by the front gate of all places, and John leaves Sherlock against a wall for that one.

“We know they’re coming,” John keeps saying. “We’re here for our own protection. No, I don’t know why they’re not here yet.”

They should have been. Everyone agrees on that: the laguz should have been here by now. They should have attacked. There should be something, and the utter lack of it has driven paranoia through the roof.

“Are you saying more time to build outworks is a problem?” John demands of more than one restless soldier. “I don’t see that problem.”

Evening begins to fall with no sign of attack. Sherlock drags John back up to the roof despite John’s foul mood. “You need wind on your face,” Sherlock urges. “Come on.”

They take their spots back up by the parapet, and the wind is from the north tonight. Sherlock spreads his arms, robes billowing, and the sight makes John giggle a bit.

Sherlock starts to laugh, and then it’s both of them in full, giggling and giggling. When Sherlock stops, he stops without warning and seizes John by the arms.

“I didn’t plan for you,” he says. “When I thought you were dead, I stopped planning with you in mind.”

“Makes sense,” John says with a bit of a laugh. His smile fades in the face of Sherlock’s earnestness. “Sorry, what are you talking about?”

“I didn’t plan for you,” Sherlock repeats, hushed, insistent. He keeps his eyes closed the way he does when they’re in public. The struggle is obvious.

“I didn’t plan for you either,” John says. “And I don’t think it matters.”

“I don’t want you to die,” Sherlock says. “I have an active dislike toward the notion.”

“I want you to live, too,” John says.

“This is a problem.”

John laughs. “Of course it’s a problem!”

Sherlock doesn’t laugh with him, absolutely refuses to, and they turn in for the night.

 

The fifth day is worse than the fourth, more so because the scouts and foraging teams haven’t returned. The laguz are out there. They wait without attacking. All agree that this is inexplicable in the extreme. The consensus is that the laguz will wait for nightfall and stage an attack in the dark. That being the case, all attention turns toward the torches.

John and Sherlock are set back on inventory duty, a great deal of silent, dull sorting that does nothing to relieve the tension.

Apropos of nothing, Sherlock says, “Swap sashes with me.”

“What? No, I’m fine.”

“Swap,” Sherlock insists, untying his own.

“Er, why.”

“Because this is mine and I want you to have it.”

John hesitates.

“Take it.”

“Is that all you have left?” John asks. He wants to offer something of his own in turn, but all he has left of his own belongings are his smallclothes, trousers, boots and socks. Soon to be sock, singular, if the holes grow any worse.

“Molly gave it to me at the manse. I’m not overwhelmingly attached.” He thrusts the length of blue cloth out at John. “Take it.”

John takes it. He removes his own red sash and hands it to Sherlock. Sherlock ties on the red with the knot on the left. He deeply insults John’s intelligence when John ties the blue on with the knot on the right, but habit is habit. John looks out of place as it is, wearing the blue. So many of the soldiers have assumed the blue simply signals Sherlock’s condition, nothing more, but everyone is too busy to pay John’s clothing much attention.

That night, when Sherlock moves toward the stairs and John follows, the light is fading quickly. It’s unnerving enough a day that John welcomes their new habit with relief. They’ve orders to be close at hand should fighting break out during the night, and all that means is they each carry a staff. Everywhere in the fort is close to the fighting.

It’s another southward wind tonight. When Sherlock opens his arms to better catch the breeze on his back, John does as well. There are more watchmen up top tonight and archers as well; if John can make Sherlock’s oddities appear typical of Crimean priests, it would be a help. This is one of Sherlock’s only pleasures, and John won’t let it be taken from him. Fortunately, the sight of the cassocks provides them with a small amount of private space, such as there is to be had.

Below them, brands are lit and torches passed. The army prepares to hold its ground. Cavaliers await orders for a sally, their horses restless. The unruliness of the horses is what confirms it: the laguz are about.

“John,” Sherlock murmurs.

“Hm?”

“Hold this for me.”

John already has one staff in hand, but he takes the other. He bites down a sound of surprise when Sherlock takes hold of the blue sash and forces the knot to the left side.

“There,” Sherlock says with satisfaction.

“You arse.”

“Mm, yes.”

“Take your staff back.”

“No. You’ll want it.”

John frowns at him.

Sherlock, of course, pretends not to see.

“Sherlock--”

“Look south,” Sherlock instructs.

John does, not sure what he’s meant to see in the waning light of the sun. He’d look down between the merlons—there’s an embrasure just before him—but he’s not terribly fond of heights. The wind cools the back of his neck. He shivers.

“And stay calm,” Sherlock adds, voice pitched low.

“Why?” John asks, immediately on edge.

“Will you do that for me?”

“Sherlock,” John says.

“Please,” Sherlock whispers.

“I’m calm,” John says.

“Yes. Stay that way. When I say, stretch out your arms to either side.”

“Er. Why?”

“If I told you why, you might not do it.”

John looks at him. Sherlock does not look back.

“John, please. Will you do this for me?”

“It’s that important?”

“Obviously.”

“I don’t understand,” John says.

“You will in a minute. Arms out when I say. Eyes ahead. Will you do that?”

There’s more at stake here than looking like an arse, but John can’t see what. “All right,” John says. He turns his face back to the south, over the parapet before him.

He waits a strange stretch of time, nothing happening, nothing continuing to happen but the lighting of torches below, of torches around them as daylight continues to fade. If there’s some sound they’re listening for below the murmur of archers ready with their bows, John can’t hear it.

For no reason John can name, Sherlock hisses, “ _Now_!”

John stretches his arms, trying for a casual motion with a staff in each hand, and then there is shouting, there is a screech, and twin bands of sharp steel seize John below the shoulders and _drag_ him. All in an instant, his legs smash into stone, the wall high even at the lowest point of the crenels, and the double _clang_ of staff-on-stone nearly pulls both staves from John’s hands. The inescapable force of it drives him over, _pulls_ him over, and his pained cry sticks in his throat as the fort drops away.

“Hawk!” someone screams. “Archers, fire!”

“You’ll hit him!” Sherlock shouts. “Stop, you’ll hit him!”

The roar of wind rips all other sounds from his ears. John might be screaming, he has no idea if he’s screaming, there’s a shout in his throat, a shout in his open mouth, but the rushing wind forces it back inside him. His shoulder, his _shoulder_. His _legs_.

He looks down, too afraid to look up, and this is why rabbits stop struggling. Because he looks past his bloody legs, past his feet, and all the way down to the camp, to fire marking where the ground lies, to the shadows stretching upon the soil. And, fuck, it’s getting closer. It is rapidly, rapidly getting closer, close enough that fire spells flare up toward them, fiery heat lost with the chill of speed.

Past the camp, past the ditch, past the glacis, a gliding swoop of motion, and the giant bird, the hawk, it begins to screech as it dives for the distant tree line.

Roars greet its cry. Roars below them, roars in the darkness of the woods, savage bellows as tigers chase their descent. Trembling and immobile, John quivers in the hawk laguz’s talons, unable to see. The roars veer away abruptly, and the hawk turns with them. John’s feet strike the side of a tree, and he cries out for the first time, more surprise than pain.

They’re guiding it. The tigers are guiding the hawk.

Loud grunts on either side now, dropping down low, and the hawk screeches one last time before releasing John. John knocks into a man’s chest and promptly drops both staves to better hold on, to better be caught. A poor plan, as he is immediately thrown to the ground. Legs blazing with pain, he cries out. He scrambles to sit up but ultimately fails to stand.

“Who the hell is this?” the man demands. A dark shape against the night, the man points at John. “Who the hell is that?”

“He was the only one wearing blue!” a woman protests. “You know I can’t see at night.”

“That’s a beorc! A _Daein_ beorc.”

“I’m Crimean!” John protests. “I had to serve, or they’d have killed my friend. I’m Crimean, I swear.”

“I don’t care where it’s from,” says another woman, much younger sounding than the first. “It’s still a human.”

“Where did you get that?” the man demands, still pointing at John.

“Get what?”

“Don’t play smart.”

“No, I can’t see,” John says.

“The cloth around your waist.”

“It’s my friend’s,” John says. “He gave it to me. The second staff is his too. Can I have that back? I’ve torn up my legs.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry, dear,” the older woman apologises. “I can’t see either, you understand. It’s very dark.”

Something growls behind John.

“He’s got a point,” the younger woman states.

“We’ll see,” the man says. Then: “Here.” His shadow moves. John reaches forward for the staff, a side-to-side motion until he finds it.

“Thank you.” The power rises through John’s arm of its own accord, the staff seeking only to fulfil its function. He doesn’t need to say the words, not for himself. Very fortunate, because in the red healing light, pairs of eyes in untold numbers gleam out of the shadows, and John’s mouth dries up.

Not at the eyes. Not at the claws or the flicking tails or twitching ears. Instead, it’s the sight of the woman squinting into the faint light, the small woman with the immense brown wings. The woman with the purple sash about her waist, tied just so on the left.

“Oh,” John breathes, and the light fades upon a changed world.


	6. Endgame: Strength and Stratagem

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With John captured by the laguz and Sherlock trapped within the fort, the siege escalates into bloody conflict.

“I think you understand the situation you’re in,” the laguz man, the tiger says. He may have crossed his arms in the dark. He sounds like a man with crossed arms.

“You wanted to... _rescue_ Sherlock,” John says. “That’s what this was for.” He touches the sash still about his waist. The darkness pricks at his skin from all sides, blocking his sight and preventing no harm.

“And what are we to do with you instead, I wonder,” the tiger muses. “It’s too dark to send Mrs Hudson back for that idiot, and the archers are waiting for her now. Any suggestions?”

Something behind John grunts and the laguz woman laughs. The younger cat, not the hawk.

“Anything _productive_ ,” the tiger says. Then: “Wait. Beorc, what’s your name?”

“John,” John says.

The tiger groans. “Of course it is. You’re supposed to be dead, you know.”

“I’m not terribly sorry about that,” John half-apologises.

“He could be a different John,” the cat says.

“Your friends and the girl you were travelling with,” the tiger says. “What were their names?”

“Bill, Mike, and Molly,” John says.

The tiger grunts. “You’re him, then.”

“I, yes.” If that means they’re not about to kill him, yes.

“Fine,” says the tiger. “Beorc, you’re with Mrs Hudson. Donovan, guide them to the camp and put a watch on him. Anderson, get Dimmock. We need a new plan.”

The something behind John slips away, movements close to silent.

“Was Sherlock supposed to be a scout?” John asks.

There’s a laugh and someone—the cat?—says, “That’s what you get for trusting a crow.”

“Donovan,” the tiger chastises. “You, John: you try to run off and my people will kill you. Stay with Mrs Hudson, and I’ll see about you in the morning. We’ll have plenty of wounded by then.”

“What about Sherlock?” Mrs Hudson cries. “You can’t leave him!”

“He’s made his choice very clear. I’m sorry, but we can’t wait another night. Donovan, with me!” With that, there is a shimmer of grey light and something huge lopes away into the shadows. Another shimmer, purple this time, and that’s Donovan gone as well. All around him, the flickering firefly lights of transformative magic herald the advance of the laguz. It is soft and nigh silent, too beautiful to be trusted.

“Will they keep him inside?” Mrs Hudson asks.

“Sorry, what?”

“Sherlock,” she says. “Will they keep him inside, away from the fighting?”

“They, they should,” John says. Something brushes by him in the dark, and he jerks away from it. Chuffing noises around him, heading north: the laughter of enormous cats. “They, um.” Stay calm. Stay calm. “Sorry, where are you?”

“Hard to say at the moment,” she replies. “Hold out your hand toward me, and I’ll reach around for it.”

John obeys, and a hand finds his wrist.

“There you are. We’ll be here for the night, so be careful.”

They shift a bit until they’re linking arms. She’s shorter than he is, and her arms are thin. Her skin feels like the skin of any woman who survives to old age. No feathers, no fur. Only the fragile softness of age. A long, feathery expanse settles behind John’s back, tangible if not touching.

“Were you the hawk?” he asks. “The one that carried me off, that was you, wasn’t it?”

“It certainly wasn’t anyone else.”

“Oh. Um.” Something—someone?—roars through the dark, and being polite is abruptly important. “Thank you. I, er, hope I wasn’t thrashing around too much.”

“Oh, no, you went nice and still,” she assures him, patting his arm. “You were heavier than I was expecting, that’s all. When Sherlock and I practised, he wasn’t—” Her voice breaks. She gasps in a breath and continues, “He’s lighter than you are. He’s so much smaller now, you see.” Her voice breaks again.

“How about we sit down,” he suggests. He has a sense of her nodding, and they lower themselves to the forest floor. There’s a rustling, folding sound, and John wishes he could see how she manages those wings.

“They’ll come back for us when they’re done fighting for the night,” she assures him. “Fire spells blind beorc at night. It’d be funny, how their aim goes, if it weren’t so serious.”

John doesn’t quite know what to say. The roars grow louder through the trees, now joined by shouting. John turns his head, watching for flares of magic, but there are too many trees and too much distance to the fort to see more than flickers of red. Those might be arrows, lit in the dark to be shot into the ground. The shouting grows worse and echoes strangely. The confusion of a night raid.

“What will they do to him when they realise he can’t use magic?” Mrs Hudson asks.

“I think he’ll stutter his way through,” John says. “I can’t see them killing him.”

“They’ve already done everything else,” Mrs Hudson says. The tremble touches her voice yet again.

“Is it... I’m sorry, I’ve not been taught any of this. Is it like the tails? Like the tigers and the cats. Are the, um. The wings. Are they the same?”

“He would have flown away if they weren’t,” Mrs Hudson says.

“Right. Sorry. That should have been obvious.”

A particularly bad scream pierces the night. It doesn’t sound human, but then, it never does.

“Is this the same bunch?” Mrs Hudson asks.

“Sorry?”

“The men who tore off his wings,” Mrs Hudson says. “The Daein soldiers who broke into that Crimean villa. Are they in there with him?”

“I... don’t know.”

He thinks of the man he met in the manse. In the cell. Locking himself inside to lock John and Molly out. Bleeding in the dark and ready to scream at a touch. He must have been as blind there as he was in the forest. But had the soldiers thrown him inside or had they found him there? A manacle about his leg, Molly had said, and the scarring is certainly there, old and foul. They’d found him there, chained in a cell meant for peacekeeping long ago. But why?

“He said he was imprisoned in Begnion,” John says.

“That’s where they trapped him.” The tremor is back in full. “We told him not to go, but he’s always been so _stubborn_.”

“Still is,” John says.

“Good,” she says. “I didn’t think they’d break him, not so quickly.”

“They had him nearly twenty years,” John says. “He was a _kid_.”

“He still is, in some ways. Laguz take longer to grow up, dear.”

“He was a kid,” John repeats.

“I know,” she says, more tired than tearful. “That doesn’t change anything, I’m afraid. It would have when I was a child, but not now. Begnion’s changed too much since then.”

He tells himself the churning of his stomach is from the charred scents on the night breeze. They’re downwind, after all.

“He’ll find a way out,” John says. “After the assault. They’re not going to break into the fort, not in one night. There’s time. The Daeins might expect him to heal, but he should be able to play frightened enough that they’ll stick him away somewhere. I don’t think they’d beat a priest—they think he’s a priest—and I’m sure they wouldn’t do it during a siege. You don’t break morale like that.”

“He’s good at picking locks,” Mrs Hudson says.

“He is,” John agrees.

She squeezes his hand in the dark and John squeezes back. If a Daein sally breaks through the laguz and into the woods, he thinks he’ll be able to hide her behind him. He’s not sure how large her wings are or how well she can tuck them away. Those could prove impossible to hide. Even so, he’ll try.

 

The roars and the shouts die down, fall silent, and rekindle into new conflict all through the night. The roars are irregular in timing and terrible in sound, and the second time John is jarred awake by the noise, he realises this is the point. He wonders what the panic is like inside.

“Strange things, walls,” Mrs Hudson muses. “Now, a roof will keep you out, but walls without one always seem silly, don’t they?”

John tries to find a way to explain walls to a woman who is also a bird. “They’re good for putting archers on,” John says.

“That’s always such a problem.”

They sit in relative silence. The night is still and strange between the bellows of the beasts. Every so often, a flare of fire will gleam through the darkness, but no one ever seems to hit anything.

John shifts a bit, his bum aching and damp from the forest floor.

“Was he shot down?” Mrs Hudson asks.

“Sherlock?”

“Yes. Was he shot down?”

“I don’t know,” John says. “He’s never spoken about it.” An understatement of the highest degree. “He said they imprisoned him for asking questions.”

“He wouldn’t turn down the job,” Mrs Hudson explains. “We begged him to, but he refused.”

“Investigating the massacre? The assassination that sparked it, I mean.”

Mrs Hudson hums agreement.

“So he went into Begnion right after a mass laguz killing,” John says.

“And just as the slave trade became part of the black market and nearly impossible to trace,” she agrees. She sighs. “But at least we have him back, what’s left of him.”

“He’s still alive,” John says.

“Half of him. And he can’t go home. Oh, I could carry him back, but what then? Leave him on a cliff for the rest of his life? He’d starve to death if he didn’t kill himself first.”

“There’s always Gallia. Two of my friends are there, and, well. I think she’s his friend. Sort of. Passably his friend. We could stay in Gallia, look after each other. We’ve done it before. Not actually in Gallia, but on the way. We could try, at least.”

“You won’t be going after the princess, then?” Mrs Hudson asks.

John searches for honesty on a face he can’t see.

“Princess Crimea?” Mrs Hudson prompts. “She’s the only one about these days, isn’t she? I don’t think King Daein has a daughter.”

“I didn’t think she was real,” John says. “I mean, is she? Where did you hear this?”

“Gallian soldiers,” Mrs Hudson says. “Some quite high up. I fly messages for Phoenicis. That’s the hawk island, dear. The ravens are over on Kilvas. There are some who won’t go back and forth, these days, but it all seems a bit silly, doesn’t it? I can still remember when we all lived in Begnion. But now everyone needs their own country, and then they all need to invade each other and it simply never stops. Beorc governments move so quickly, too, don’t they? I don’t know how you keep track. Half a century of this king, half a century of that queen; that seems terribly confusing.

“Now, what was I saying? Oh, yes. Princess Crimea. King Gallia recognised her as King Crimea’s daughter. Said she had the right smell and all of that. You can’t fake scent, not for families. And she seems to be a nice girl, by the sound of it. Terribly young, not even two decades old! Imagine that, an infant on the throne. But good ideas. A beorc princess coming to a laguz king for help: I would never have imagined! It gives you hope, doesn’t it?”

Laguz living in Begnion? A princess of nearly twenty called a baby? John tries to make sense of any of that and settles on asking, “Hope for...?”

“Peace,” she says. “Not many of us can remember it anymore. It makes me sad for the children. And you poor beorc! It’s hardly a wonder you don’t know any better.”

“Sorry? When were you living in Begnion?”

“Oh, that was before Crimea, dear,” Mrs Hudson tells him.

“Crimea is over three hundred years old,” John says. “Or it was, I suppose.” Maybe it still is, if they do have a real princess.

“That sounds about right,” says Mrs Hudson.

“You’re over three hundred years old.”

Mrs Hudson laughs, a surprised sound. “Of course I am. I know it’s dark, but I would I have thought I sounded older than that.”

“You sound, you sound sixty. Seventy or eighty at the most,” John says, bewildered.

She swats at his arm. “Oh, you’re a charmer. My husband was just the same way.”

“How, um.” What in the world. “How old do you think I am?”

“Beorc age so quickly,” she muses. “Sixty?”

“Um. No.”

“Seventy?”

“Thirty-six,” John says.

“Are you really? That’s so _young_.” She sounds appalled.

John’s been a soldier since he was sixteen. It’s been close to twenty years since someone’s said something like that to him. “That’s middle age,” John says. “For us, I mean.”

A slight pause, and Mrs Hudson squeezes his arm.

“How old is Sherlock?” John asks.

“In his late two’s, I think. He might be in his early three’s by now.”

“Oh.” Hundreds. She means hundreds.

Without their whispers, the night is tense and quiet. Roars shatter the stillness, but not his mood.

“Are you all right, dear?”

“Fine.”

She squeezes his arm again.

“It’s good,” he says. “That he wasn’t a child for it. It’s not... it can’t be good, but. It was worse the other way.”

“It’s bad every way,” she whispers.

John nods in the dark, unseen, but certainly not unobserved. They speak no more that night.

 

Dawn is a slow, dragging light that reveals Mrs Hudson to be a perfectly normal woman, save for the odd clothes and the giant wings on her back. Each wing is wider and longer than John is. Through the immediate copse of trees and the dew-shining grass beyond, the fort is a small figure in a barren, torn field. John can’t see the outworks, not from this distance, and as the torches go out with the rising of the sun, it’s difficult to tell to what extent the Daein forces are still moving.

“We’ll wait until someone comes to get us,” Mrs Hudson says. When she looks about, the tips of pointed ears are visible against her short, tousled hair.

“You’re very calm for a civilian,” John notes. He knows what a civilian is, and she definitely is one, laguz or not.

“When you’re old, waiting doesn’t take as long.”

“No, I mean sitting on the edge of a battlefield all night.”

“Oh, it was hardly the edge.” She stretches out her arms and the wings follow, immense and lovely. They suit her, which is not something John thought wings would ever do on a person. They suit her, brown and orderly, never quite folding.

They wait, and John thinks of Sherlock’s back, his tense shoulders. How, early on, he balanced better for carrying a pack. How much do wings weigh? And has John ever seen his ears? Was that the real reason Sherlock kept his hood pulled low?

John’s interrupted from his thoughts by the return of one of the cats. Large and dark brown, it races toward them as if about to pounce, then rears up into a light jog, into a woman. Purple shimmering light, a stomach-twisting melting of features, and somehow she has clothes. Probably not a safe subject to ask about, the mysteriously appearing clothing. _Why aren’t you naked_ is a frowned upon question in most places.

“You’re a healer,” the cat says, her voice familiar.

“You’re... Donovan?”

“I am,” she says, and the simple answer is somehow defiant. “Are you going to look after our wounded, or do we have to put you somewhere until the fighting ends?”

John picks up both staves.

“Is there any sign of Sherlock?” Mrs Hudson asks.

“Crows don’t come out at night,” Donovan replies. “You of all people should know that. Might be out now, behind the wall. If you think you can keep out of arrow-range, an aerial report wouldn’t go amiss.”

“Oh, I should be all right,” Mrs Hudson says.

“Good. I’ll be there—” she points generally back toward the way she’d come “—with Lestrade. We need to know where they’re most likely to let out a ground attack.”

“West side,” John says. “That’s where the horses are, and the cavalry are the ones you’ll want to look out for.”

For the first time, Donovan doesn’t look at him as if he were something unpleasant stuck to her foot. Her bare foot, he notices. Clothing, but no shoes. “Come on, then,” she says.

“Take care,” Mrs Hudson says, then takes a few quick steps forward before jumping, and rising, and soaring. Again, the shimmering light, and then a hawk meets the sky.

Donovan changes back as well, a fluid yet grotesque transition of shifting bones and sprouting fur. Good of Mrs Hudson to change high up, though John doubts she had him in mind upon taking off. Maybe it’s easier to fly that way. Donovan pads forward before glaring over her shoulder, tail twitching.

“Right, coming,” John says and follows.

 

The laguz are wary of his spells, and burned as they are, John can’t fault them. The few who have trained with the Crimean army are willing to let him near, but the Daein robes do little to recommend John’s character. John shucks them, stripping down to shirt and trousers, and everything seems a bit better after that. As if he’s thrown off a weight he’d thought was merely part of his skin.

The work is much the same as it ever is, even with the change in patients. The same sense of unending blood and pointless waiting. The night assault has long since finished, and many nap in anticipation of the night to come.

“There’s going to be a sally before dark,” John says the moment he catches sight of Lestrade. One of Lestrade’s ears twitches in John’s direction, and he holds up a hand to a pair of transformed laguz before joining John.

“I’d gathered that, thanks. What are we looking at?”

“Mostly cavalry,” John says, certain of it. “They’re going to lay a trap in the surviving outworks and bait your troops into it. That means horses charging out and charging back. I wouldn’t pursue them all the way back to the wall, not into firing range.”

Lestrade shakes his head. “This lot will chase anything.”

“Then you’ll have to surround the horses,” John says. “They’ll have to turn and they won’t be able to do it tightly. There’s your chance. Failing that, hamstring as many horses as possible. Daein soldiers won’t last on foot.”

Lestrade says nothing, simply tilts his head and looks at him.

“Sir,” John amends belatedly.

“Sherlock knew what he was doing, I’ll give him that.”

John meets his gaze squarely.

“Right then.” Lestrade folds his arms. “What’s the best way to knock a beorc off a horse?”

“From the side. The saddles are made to withstand force from the front.”

“What will they be armed with?”

“Mostly lances. Some will have swords, possibly as secondary weapons in case the lance is pulled out of their hands. They all train right-handed, so attack on their left, your right.”

“Weaknesses in armour?”

“Legs,” John says immediately. “There’s no armour on the thighs. If you can tear out the back of the knee, they won’t be able to ride.”

Lestrade nods along. More questions, more answers, and when Lestrade trots away on four legs to tell his troops the new plan, John tells himself he’s doing the right thing.

 

It’s a slaughter.

“Those poor horses,” Mrs Hudson murmurs. They stand close to the tree line, ostensibly out of sight of the fort under the green cover. The animals scream more than the people, somehow more heart-wrenching for it. Its deceased rider flopping out of the saddle, one horse bolts for the trees. John runs to catch it before it can encounter the laguz troops still stationed within the forest.

He doesn’t manage it, not even close. When he catches up, he stares at Donovan, dumbfounded.

“Don’t frighten it,” she hisses at John, one hand stroking the horse’s neck, the other on the reins. John knows the horse by sight. It’s Edmund’s gelding. Edmund is dead.

“Oh,” John says. “I thought... Never mind.”

“I’m not about to mistake a _horse_ for the enemy.”

“Right, sorry, of course.”

Another scream from the battlefield and the horse whinnies worriedly, tossing its head.

Immediately after come the roars.

Donovan perks up, looking past John toward sights unseen. “That’s finished, then.”

“Sorry, could I...?” He points to the horse’s saddle, to the sheathed sword still fastened there.

“Not a chance.”

He backs away immediately. “Right.”

Another roar. “Lestrade wants us.” Donovan hands the reins to another laguz before setting off at an absurd pace that John strains to match. She stays on two feet, which is the only reason John is able to keep her in sight.

When they arrive, it can’t be said Lestrade is waiting for them. He’s far too busy for that. At least, John assumes so: that grey tiger must be him. Growls and grunts and chuffing, a world of unknown body language, and those must be the orders. In the centre of the circle is a corpse, its dark amour lightened by dust and scuff marks. The other laguz move out, and Donovan looks at John expectantly.

Lestrade rises up into a man, a motion not unlike stretching the back after touching the toes. “Can you ride?”

“A bit,” John says.

“Can you ride with armour on? He’s about your size, isn’t he?”

John looks at the corpse. Though the throat was torn out, the helmet is still on, barely. Beneath it is a face John doubtlessly knows. “I can try,” he says, “if there’s a good reason for it.”

“Oh, there is,” Lestrade tells him, a spot of enthusiasm boosting his words. “Get changed, quick as you can.”

“Sorry, I didn’t understand the briefing.”

“That’s all right,” Lestrade says. His is the confident amusement of a commander about to do something terrible to someone he dislikes. “All you need to do is ride. Fast as you can.”

“No chance you’re about to say ‘to safety,’ is there?”

“Nope.”

“Thought so.”

 

The armour is heavy beyond expectation, and the padding that should go under it is soaked through with blood in sticky patches. Once wearing the mess, climbing onto Edmund’s horse is borderline impossible. The scent of blood has the animal skittish, and the stirrups are too high. The greaves weigh down his shins though the poleyns fit well enough for him to bend his knees. Ultimately, Donovan and two other laguz help lift him onto the poor beast. It is an extremely undignified process for all involved.

Once he’s up and firmly entrenched in the saddle, Donovan hands up the helmet. Beneath him, the horse tries to shy away and can’t seem to decide which way to go. John tries to stop it with solid pressure on the reins, but the animal simply begins to walk backward. Putting his heels down brings the horse to a stop, and it’s with uncertain hands that John drops the reins to put on the helmet. The visor is terrible, the metal still warm, and perhaps some dry padding would have been a good idea.

“Are you sure you’ll be able to tell me apart?” John asks.

“I’ll stay with you the whole way,” Donovan says. “Now draw the sword and wait for the signal.”

It’s not very reassuring, but John keeps his mouth shut and does as told. All he has to do is keep his seat. That is literally all he has to do. That, and not die, but they all know the not-dying is always optional.

The wind whistles through the trees, one last moment of respite, and then a roar splits the air and startles away the few returned birds.

“Go!”

John hears a slap and a growl, and the horse bolts, taking John and two stone of armour with it. Nigh instantly, the horse breaks into a loping canter, a wave of motion that threatens to throw him, high saddle or no. Outside the visor, all blurs. All sound becomes the pounding of hooves and the snarls of great cats chasing close behind.

Donovan lets out a yowl, behind and to the left, and John pulls at the reins in the attempt to turn accordingly. Before him: the glacis and the pit beyond. The horse turns of its own volition before clearing the top, more instinct than control, and left, _left_ , around the glacis, through the ruined outworks, toward the sallyport! The horse knows where safety is, or it thinks it does.

A double yowl now.

He screams, a wordless shout of terror.

Closer, closer, closer still, and the whistling of arrows is audible even above his own racket.

“Open the gate!” he yells. “Open the gate!” They have to. The laguz must be lagging by now. They must open it, must think they have time.

A man opens it— _please, not Brian_ —and John charges through, slashing at the man’s head as he passes. He feels it connect, feels it up his arm. One man dead, an army to go.

The Daeins rush at him only after a fatal pause, and John blocks the first lance as the laguz swarm the gate. A flurry of fur and fang, and then there is nothing more to block, no human weapon left raised save the sword in John’s own hand.

In and in the laguz force rushes, overrunning the last outwork, pressing up against the fort proper.

“Rocks!” John shouts, but the first object to fall from the wall is no object at all, but a man, a mage knocked from his perch. He sees the fall but not the landing, vision too limited by the visor. Dropping the reins to do so, he tears the helmet off and lets it fall. Below, someone hisses.

John looks down and there she is, Donovan, guarding horse and rider against mistaken identity. “Sorry!” John shouts, and another sort of cry splits the air. He looks up in time to see an archer taken out, arrow half-drawn, Mrs Hudson’s talons to his eyes.

Beyond, lower: a loud _crack_. The main gates. No battering ram needed with an army of tigers. Human screaming resumes, and John sits on the horse, trapped in the saddle, trapped outdoors, trapped waiting.

One death at a time, the siege ends.


	7. Epilogue: Upon Solid Ground

“Senior officers in the keep, it looks like,” one of the cats reports. “They’ve barricaded themselves in. We have some men clawing at the door, shouldn’t take long.” John thinks his name is Anderson but isn’t sure. The cat holds still long enough for John to heal him, and that’s the important part. All of the laguz are quivering with energy, the sack of the fort well underway. It’s never a siege without sacking at the end, even for laguz. The rules of humanity become less exclusive at that realisation. The majority of the loot is food and cloth, no metal.  
  
“And Sherlock?” Lestrade asks. John’s hovering is hardly subtle.  
  
A shrug. “The scent’s muddled. He might have been killed in the frenzy. Wingless crow surrounded by human blood? He’s probably dead.”  
  
“Or he’s in the keep,” John says, now wishing he’d let Anderson bleed.  
  
“Or he’s in the keep,” Lestrade acknowledges.  
  
“That’ll be interesting when we break through,” Anderson muses.  
  
“Tell them you’ll let a priest see to their dead,” John suggests to Lestrade. Suggests only. He’s not quite angry or stupid enough to do more. “Ask if they still have the blind one, because you know he won’t run off.”  
  
“I’ll be there for the charge in,” Lestrade says. “If he’s in there, I’ll keep him safe. We don’t need any more tricks.”  
  
That’s not a good way to think when fighting a war. John doesn’t say it, but it might show on his face. He might let it show, and Lestrade grunts in something like amusement.  
  
“Tell Donovan if you want to keep the horse,” Lestrade says, a clear dismissal if John’s ever heard one. “If not, he’s dinner.”  
  
“I’ll keep the horse,” John says.  
  
“Tell Donovan.”  
  
John does as he’s bid, and then he’s kept busy. The laguz in need of healing come to him with staves stolen from the fort’s supplies. It would almost seem like payment if John didn’t keep depleting them. A small medical area gradually develops around John on the glacis, more of the laguz present to stare at him in suspicion rather than to be healed. By the afternoon, John trembles with exhaustion, mental and physical. His stomach makes a go at eating itself, unfed for nearly a full day.  
  
Only a day? It has been only a day. Yesterday, they were besieged. Yesterday, Sherlock was human. Today, John is soon to be the only human left alive.  
  
At last, someone thinks to feed him. Horse meat is a tough chew if anything ever was, but it is cooked, not raw as he’d feared. He eats his late lunch of meat and meat alone as quickly as he can, jaw aching, mind numb, and that’s when he hears a hawk cry out.  
  
John looks around before he thinks to look up. He waves, an unreal moment, and Mrs Hudson swoops across the ditch without acknowledging him. John jogs up the glacis, causing more than one resting tiger to raise its, no,  _his_ head.  
  
Across the ditch, Mrs Hudson hugs a man, her wings beating the air above the brown-clad arms holding her aloft. When he sets her down, she could be laughing or crying or both. They both could be. John can see him nodding, nodding, eyes upon her face, and when Sherlock looks across the glacis, John’s an intruder, a trespasser despite the length and depth of the ditch between them.  
  
John lifts his hand.  
  
Sherlock does not.  
  
John turns around, climbs down the glacis, and goes back to work.  
  
  
  
The laguz take to it poorly when he tends to the dead, but he doesn’t let that stop him. He finds Brian, eventually. It looks like it was a quick death. Snapped necks usually are, regardless of the claw marks.  
  
Brian is heavy, no longer warm but still limp. He is the first John attempts to drag. It’s not very far to the ditch. The body tumbles down when dropped and lies sprawled, not restful in the slightest. John climbs down and arranges him. His quiet prayer includes the names of Brian’s wife and daughters. John climbs back up.  
  
The laguz watch him. Only when John begins to speak of rotting corpses, feral dogs and death-born plagues do they begin to shift the bodies themselves.  
  
Fortunately, it is a very large ditch.  
  
  
  
Come nightfall, they sleep outside. There’s nowhere truly clean, within the fort or without, and John scavenges a few familiar items by torchlight before returning to Edmund’s horse. The reins tied loosely to a tree, the horse hasn’t moved and its gear lies untouched. The horse has a name, one John knows he’s heard, but he can’t recall it. John places the saddle bag upon the removed saddle. Within it is Brian’s shaving kit, along with a few other odds and ends of practical value. Some gold, because the future is large and wide, and the dead don’t frequent markets.  
  
Scraping at the ground, Edmund’s horse whinnies in the near-dark.  
  
“You and me both,” John agrees.  
  
One-handed, he rolls out the pilfered bedroll onto the ground, the torch held high in the other. There’s an absence of noise from the wood around him: once again, John is a spectacle.  
  
He waves out the torch, sticks the cool end firmly into the ground, and settles down for the night out of trampling range of his new horse. Somehow, he sleeps.  
  
  
  
By midmorning, bodies and dirt fill the ditch. The glacis is now a small knoll, and will give a nasty shock to whoever tries to dig there. The headstone of the mass grave is a giant grotesque joke: pulled from its hinges, the broken main gate stands tall in the shifted soil. The strength of tigers is not to be underestimated, it warns. All of the doors of the fort have been torn off, every last one.  
  
“Aren’t you meant to say a few words?” Donovan prompts, less a reminder, more a jibe.  
  
John takes it to heart anyway. He goes to the mound, folds his hands, and closes his eyes. When he goes to walk away, he finds he has an audience, a ring of watchers.  
  
“Some of them didn’t want to fight,” he says. “That didn’t matter then, and I’m not sure it matters now. But they were forced to, and no one can force them again. The relief I have living, they have in death. For them, I pray.” He bows his head, waits a moment, and then resumes walking. The laguz get out of his way. Perhaps one cat or another looks thoughtful, or perhaps that’s simply the eternal expression of a cat.  
  
  
  
Yet more of the unending horse meat passes for a light lunch before the Gallian army begins to move out. Compared to the Daein army, they have a scarcity of supplies. Unlike the Daein army, the soldiers themselves pull the carts. Tigers step into harnesses on all fours and pad southward with little more than a grumble.  
  
John watches from a distance until Donovan appears, heralded with a shimmer of purple light. “What human supplies are valuable?”  
  
“Sorry? You mean in the fort?” he asks. Her expression is answer enough. “Right, the fort. We don’t want to leave any weapons behind. It’s a waste, but the tomes could burn. Everything else will have to be carried away or buried. Or left out in the rain, I suppose. I imagine you’ve already taken all the food.”  
  
She shows him to the remaining carts and the jumble of loot contained therein.  
  
John asks, “Do you want me to explain what’s the best stuff, or should I have at it?”  
  
“Have at it,” Donovan says, waving him forward.  
  
She watches, of course, because none of the laguz want to leave John unsupervised with sharp objects. It’s hardly the worst way John’s been watched in recent days. John unpacks and sorts, organises and reloads. The rhythm to it is steady and calming. Metal feels good in his hands.  
  
“Are you planning on selling or using?” John asks as his back begins to ache.  
  
“Selling. Laguz don’t need weapons,” Donovan scoffs.  
  
“No, why bother when there are so many human refugees to be armed, hm?” a familiar voice sneers.  
  
John looks up sharply.  
  
Sherlock doesn’t look at him, his gaze trained on Donovan.  
  
“Complaints, crow?” Donovan sneers back.  
  
“None. Though I do imagine your superiors will be miffed if you don’t inform them of your haul.”  
  
Donovan rolls her eyes. “Right, because any of the advance guard will get to the capital within a week.”  
  
“No, but Mrs Hudson does happen to be  _flying_. Let her leave remotely before dark tonight, and she’ll be there by tomorrow evening.” Something dreadful pulls at the corner of his mouth and Sherlock shrugs disparagingly. “Hawks. So slow.”  
  
“Compared to what?” Donovan asks.  
  
Sherlock’s face becomes marble, his eyes flint. His gaze shifts to Donovan’s tail, then back to her face.  
  
Donovan looks away. Her tail twitches to lie down along the back of one leg.  
  
“I thought as much,” Sherlock states.  
  
Sherlock turns to go, and John asks, “What kind of refugees?”  
  
Halted in profile, Sherlock doesn’t look at him. There’s negative space to him now, an empty expanse riding upon his back.  
  
“If they’re untrained, I should be packing the lighter weapons. The better stuff takes more skill to use. Do we have archers? Spearmen?”  
  
“No idea,” Sherlock says, not looking at him.  
  
“A bit of everything, then.”  
  
“If you like.”  
  
John nods. He swallows. “Do you know if Mike and Bill--”  
  
Sherlock walks away.  
  
  
  
“Sherlock won’t talk to me,” John tells Mrs Hudson once Donovan feeds her the weaponry report. He tells her in lowered tones, speaking softly as they hug goodbye.  
  
“He’s a prideful one,” she answers. “Won’t let anyone see him broken, and now he can’t help it. Try to take care of him, if he’ll let you. Say I made you, if that helps.”  
  
“I will,” John promises, but it sits on him poorly.  
  
She flies away soon after. John watches her vanish beyond the trees, then watches a while longer still. He thinks of the man from the dungeon, falling on his face for looking to the sky.  
  
  
  
John manages to track him down before sunset. Finding the one man without a tail isn’t terribly difficult. Getting Sherlock to meet his gaze, however, is.  
  
“Look, are you going to sulk the entire way back to Gallia?” John asks. “Because I was going to let you ride the horse. Not that I mind, you know, assisting the blind, but putting you in a saddle seems simpler.”  
  
Sherlock glares at him for the first time in two, possibly three days.  
  
“Unless you’d rather be chucked into a cart,” John adds. “Won’t be space for you there until more of the provisions are used up, though, so you might want to try the horse.”  
  
“I don’t need help  _walking_!” Sherlock spits.  
  
“ _You can’t see in the dark_ , you tit!” John shouts. “Those great big things called trees, they’re not half hard when you walk face-first into one. Do you want to ride on the horse or not?”  
  
Sherlock folds his arms over his chest. “Fine.”  
  
“Fine?”  
  
“Yes, fine!”  
  
“Good,” John says and promptly walks away.  
  
  
  
Bits of the army keep moving out at different times, a gradual process that continues through the night. It gives new meaning to the expression “as difficult as herding cats”. Come morning, the last of the supply train moves out. The orders are given to take what they can carry and abandon the rest.  
  
John leaves the armour. He keeps the sword.  
  
  
  
Once at the Sea of Trees, a self-sacrificing sigh sounds behind John.  
  
“If I must,” Sherlock allows, and then seems to expect John to help him mount.  
  
John’s having none of it. “You’re the tall one. You climb up.”  
  
Sherlock huffs and sighs and strains, but once successfully mounted, looks immensely proud of himself. He holds onto the saddle.  
  
Reins in hand, John leads him forward.  
  
  
  
It’s a long walk.  
  
  
  
“I hate this forest,” Sherlock whinges. “I hate it, I  _hate_ it, _I hate it_ \--”  
  
“Heard you the first time!” Donovan shouts back.  
  
“And the fifth!” Lestrade adds.  
  
With the hand not holding the reins, John reaches up to pat Sherlock on the knee.  
  
Sherlock swats at the top of John’s head.  
  
John fends him off easily, and when he looks up, the other man is grinning into the dark.  
  
  
  
They bunk down together at night. Sherlock complains about saddle soreness. Life continues on until John can think of it as normal.  
  
  
  
“You could have warned me,” John says as Sherlock hobbles along behind him, holding onto the saddle with one hand rather than riding.  
  
“About what?”  
  
“About the giant bloody bird coming to pluck me off the roof.”  
  
“John, that is no way to talk about Mrs Hudson.”  
  
“No it isn’t, but you still could have warned me.”  
  
“No,” Sherlock answers.  
  
John glares over his shoulder at him, certain Sherlock will get the idea if not the actual image.  
  
“If I’d warned you, you might have refused,” Sherlock explains.  
  
John shakes his head and looks forward.  
  
“John?”  
  
“I wouldn’t have.”  
  
“I know that  _now_ ,” Sherlock says.  
  
“Do you?”  
  
“ _Yes_.”  
  
Well then. “Good.”  
  
  
  
A week brings them through the forest, possibly less than a week. “Six days,” Sherlock supplies before John can voice his question. “Even beast laguz are faster than humans.”  
  
“Beorc,” John corrects.  
  
Sherlock scoffs. “We only call the good ones that.”  
  
“Speaking of,” John says. “Mike and Bill? And Molly, where’d they get to?”  
  
Sherlock’s mouth sets into a hard line.  
  
“What?” His stomach drops. “They’re not dead, are they?”  
  
Sherlock sighs. “They’re alive.”  
  
“Don’t sound so relieved! And don’t scare me like that, you arse. Where are they?”  
  
“They’re with the other Crimean refugees. There aren’t many.”  
  
“Is Gallia offering Crimea aid, then?” John asks.  
  
“Possibly. I wouldn’t count on much.”  
  
“Even the chance of it,” John says.  
  
Sherlock makes a noise close to a laugh and very much like derision. “Enlisting again, John?”  
  
“At this rate, I’ve already been in half the armies in the known world,” John says. “Why stop?”  
  
“Why not indeed,” Sherlock murmurs. “I would have thought you’d want to leave Gallia. There are ways into Begnion. Lestrade trusts you enough to let you use them.”  
  
“After all the trouble getting here?” John asks. “I might as well stay a while.”  
  
Sherlock acknowledges this with a shrug.  
  
“What about you?” John asks.  
  
Sherlock looks at him blankly. As if the question is too idiotic to acknowledge. Or, as the tension in the man’s body would imply, as if the question has no answer.  
  
“Not back to Begnion?” John asks. “I know you’ve a job to finish, but you could take, I don’t know. A vacation. Not that, you know, being impressed into armies and thrown into dungeons isn’t well and good, but variety can be nice. You could stay here, at least until the war’s over. Though, well. With the trail twenty years old and now a war in the middle of it, it doesn’t make much sense for you to go back to Begnion at all, really.”  
  
Sherlock manages to hold the frown, but the tension in his hunched shoulders eases. “I’ll consider it,” he says.  
  
“All I’m asking,” John promises.  
  
  
  
The Gallian army splits into smaller battalions once in Gallia proper, and John and Sherlock stay with Lestrade’s. John takes to walking on foot, his warhorse playing the role of pack mule now that Sherlock can see. The laguz seem more relaxed when John isn’t on horseback, and when a few hours of riding leads to saddle soreness, John is more than willing to humour them.  
  
“We need more training,” Lestrade says to him, apropos of nothing. “We know the basics of how beorc fight, but we need much more than that.”  
  
“Is that what I’m for?” John asks.  
  
“If you’d like to be.” A speculative sort of trust matches the words. “There’s a chance we’ll be fighting Daein more in the days to come. They claim we’re hiding your sodding princess.”  
  
“Are you?” Mrs Hudson had said the princess had moved on to Begnion already.  
  
“Hell if I know. Looks more like an excuse to keep expanding territory.”  
  
John nods. “It does, a bit. About the training: I could go look around the Crimean refugee camp, see if anyone else wants to volunteer. You lot need to know how to fight mages. Less on the killing them, more on the dodging spells bit.”  
  
Lestrade gives him a bemused grin. “If you think you can get my soldiers to practice without clawing anyone’s head off, be my guest.”  
  
Right then. “I can try. Where are the refugees?”  
  
“I’ll have Donovan take you,” Lestrade replies.  
  
“Thanks.”  
  
Lestrade looks at him oddly. “You’re the one offering to help, not me.”  
  
“They killed my people too,” John says simply.  
  
One of Lestrade’s ears pricks towards John. A slight nod, and they speak no more, quiet in understanding.  
  
  
  
Donovan drops him off at the edge of the camp, preferring to hang back out of sight. Choosing to remain with Lestrade—as well as John’s horse—Sherlock obviously shares that preference, possibly the first thing he’s had in common with Donovan.  
  
After a little over a week surrounded by laguz, the Crimean refugee camp is jarring in the extreme. Rough buildings and haphazard tents line footpaths and frame campfires. A small corral of stacked tree limbs holds in a half a dozen horses, largely draft animals. There are, bizarrely, three cows. John can’t imagine how anyone managed to bring cows through the Sea of Trees while the Daein army was trampling through it, but that’s Crimeans. The chickens make a bit more sense. The cats—actual cats, not laguz cats—are hardly a surprise.  
  
The surprise is the hug from behind that lifts him off his feet, hauling him up into the air kicking and cursing. “Bill, you  _wanker_!” He hits his heels against metal greaves.  
  
Bill laughs and drops him, and they swear at each other to their hearts’ content. John goes for a second hug, a real one, and there’s a bit of a tussle in which John’s lower centre of gravity keeps his feet on the ground. They slap each other’s backs, percussive thumps of the hand against cloth and metal.  
  
“You need to stop this nearly dying thing,” Bill tells him. “It’s getting difficult to keep track of.”  
  
“Sorry for the inconvenience.”  
  
“You’d better be.”  
  
“Oh, I promise I am,” John assures him. “Where’s Mike?”  
  
Mike is bustling about inside the largest tent, a structure larger than some cottages, or even some cottages put together. It’s an impromptu hospital, no mistake about it. Upon seeing John, he makes a frantic noise, arms full of folded linens, and keeps making it until he shoves the linens off onto Bill. Rather than hugging, there is a good deal of confused gaping and excited gesturing. John laughs and goes in for the hug on his own, and Mike seems a bit calmer for John’s solidity.  
  
“Did you get lost coming out too, then?” Mike asks. “We barely got out ourselves without our human compass.”  
  
John frowns. “Sorry?”  
  
Mike and Bill’s faces fall in unison.  
  
“I thought you knew,” Mike says.  
  
“The Daein army took him, John,” Bill explains.  
  
“Oh, that,” John says. “No, I... I know that. I was there. We... That’s a surprisingly long story, come to think of it.”  
  
“He’s alive?” Mike asks.  
  
John nods.  
  
“Huh,” says Bill with a complete lack of relief.  
  
“Hold on, I’ll get Molly,” Mike says. “She’ll want to hear this.”  
  
The hug from Molly is as quick as it is unexpected. She pulls back almost immediately and looks over John’s shoulder as if expecting Sherlock to appear behind him.  
  
“He’s fine,” John tells her. “Hell of a trip, so he’s resting.”  
  
“In camp?” Molly asks.  
  
“Different camp,” John says.  
  
Molly frowns. “But this is the only Crimean camp.”  
  
John’s stomach makes an abrupt twist. “We were rescued by the Gallian army.”  
  
Molly goes pale. “Are you sure he’s safe?”  
  
“Molly,” Bill chides.  
  
“Lestrade’s a good commander,” John says. “Sherlock’s under his protection. He’ll be fine.” As long as he stops tugging tails.  
  
“That’s good to hear,” Mike says.  
  
“Right, now tell us the rest of it,” Bill adds.  
  
The story is short enough in the telling to make the experience feel like a lifetime in comparison. John details his flight from the Daein-occupied fort, but, beyond Mrs Hudson, mentions no other bird laguz. He refers to Sherlock by name and nothing else.  
  
“Hell of a thing,” Bill says when John finishes. “We only had to walk out of the woods. Only took a few days.”  
  
Molly shudders. Bit more than just a walk, it seems.  
  
“More importantly,” Mike says, “have you heard about the princess? She’s real!”  
  
“Born after Duke Renning was named heir to the throne, by the sound of it,” Bill adds. “That’s the excuse they’ve sent out for no one knowing about her. But King Gallia says she’s the real thing, and I don’t think the old lion would have a reason to lie.”  
  
“Is she still in Gallia?” John asks.  
  
“Nope,” Bill says. “The laguz managed to slip her and her escort back up north to a Crimean port. She’s sailing to Begnion for aid. By the sound of it, Daein closed off the port immediately after. But there is a way to follow. King Gallia has promised to send any beorc volunteers to Begnion through a secret way. We’ll have to be blindfolded for part of it, but we don’t have to sit and wait the war out.”  
  
“Oh,” John says.  
  
“If you want a break from fighting, you could still go,” Mike adds. “There’s sure to be a temple that would take us on. And Harry might be there, somewhere.”  
  
Or she might not be. But what if she is?  
  
“I’ll need to think about that,” John hears himself say. “Bit tired, don’t want to rush into anything. Already had a battle and a siege this month.”  
  
“That’s fair,” Bill says, obviously confident of John’s decision.  
  
“It’d be nice to be back in human civilisation,” Molly adds.  
  
Where they frame and slaughter the defenceless, John doesn’t say. He hums instead and asks Mike if there’s anything around the impromptu hospital he can help with. A few hours pass that way, Bill and Molly wander off, and then John startles Mike with his farewells.  
  
“Where are you going?” Mike asks, absolutely befuddled.  
  
“Sherlock,” John explains with a shrug. “I told him I’d be back tonight.” A lie, but it’s only a little lie. Assuming he’d return, John had made no promises.  
  
“He’s that close by?”  
  
“Might be by now, yeah.”  
  
“And... how are you getting to him?”  
  
“I’ve a guide,” John says. “Should do, if she hasn’t left.”  
  
“Laguz?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Mike looks at him, at the sword at once so light and heavy upon his hip. “You look like a soldier again.”  
  
“Feel a bit like one, too,” John agrees.  
  
“So you’ll be keeping with Bill, then?” Mike asks. “Molly wants to find a new teacher, and I’d thought I’d go with her. Not that we wouldn’t love to have you along.”  
  
“I don’t know,” John says. “Maybe.”  
  
Mike laughs a little. “Now that’s a lie. You’ve already made up your mind, haven’t you?”  
  
“Yeah,” John says. “You’re right. I have.”  
  
“Thought as much,” Mike says.  
  
“When does the camp move?”  
  
“Not too long now. I’m not sure.”  
  
“And some are staying?” John asks.  
  
“The sick and the frightened, mostly. There’s a few who want to settle down, but the soil’s all wrong for ploughing. And it’s hardly our land, is it?”  
  
“Everyone who can fight is leaving?”  
  
“I hope so!” Mike says with something of a laugh.  
  
John nods. “Right.” That’s him decided. Really decided. They’ll never need him in Begnion as much as they need him here. “I’ll be back to say goodbye before you lot move out.”  
  
Mike blinks a bit.  
  
“I’d better tell Bill, too.”  
  
“What do you mean?” Mike asks.  
  
John explains.  
  
Mike argues.  
  
John doesn’t budge.  
  
Mike gets Bill.  
  
Bill understands.  
  
Very gradually, eternally concerned, Mike gives ground.  
  
They make fresh goodbyes, but Bill walks out with him anyway. When John can’t find Donovan, he nearly groans and walks back to the Crimean camp. Bill stops him, pointing upward, and the cat stretches a bit before jumping down from the tree and rising on two feet.  
  
“Is he with you?” Donovan asks.  
  
“No,” John says.  
  
“Yes,” Bill says. “I’ve trained with Gallian soldiers before, enough to know what I’m doing.”  
  
“What, really?” John asks.  
  
Bill cuffs his shoulder.  
  
“No, I believe you know what you’re doing. But I... You’re coming? Staying, I mean.”  
  
“Sounds like we’ve a pair of matching horses now,” Bill says. “Be a shame to deny my charger a friend. I’ll stay with Mike and Molly until they’re off, if you don’t mind.”  
  
“Not in the least.”  
  
“Good,” Bill says. This last hug sets a record. Three times in a day must exceed some sort of limit. Before pulling away, Bill whispers into John’s ear a single-worded question: “Birdman?”  
  
John pulls back and meets Bill’s guileless gaze. John nods.  
  
“He wasn’t exactly subtle,” Bill says. “Honestly, the night vision was a dead giveaway. And the internal compass wasn’t half a clue either.”  
  
“Are you coming or not?” Donovan interrupts.  
  
“Coming,” John says. “Sorry.” He lifts a hand in parting, and Bill does the same.  
  
“See you soon, mate.”  
  
“You too.”  
  
  
  
John finds Sherlock brushing down the horse. They’ve taken to each other well, man and horse. John wonders if the wind feels different on horseback than it does on wing. He doesn’t ask.  
  
“Well?” Sherlock demands, voice harsh, back turned.  
  
“Bill’s staying too.”  
  
Sherlock jerks around, head whipping over his shoulder. “What?”  
  
“Bill’s staying too,” John repeats.  
  
Sherlock’s eyes search his face, flicking across all of John’s features in the quest for some elusive answer.  
  
“Bill knows about you,” John says.  
  
Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Obviously.”  
  
Brilliant, another thing Sherlock had failed to mention. “Then what’s the problem?”  
  
“Nothing.”  
  
“No, really.”  
  
“Nothing,” Sherlock insists, turning back to the horse.  
  
John takes the brush out of his hand and takes over.  
  
Sherlock wanders off in a sulk, but he does wander back. “Here,” he says and thrusts out a pewter mug filled with something that could be soup or vomit. When everything around John’s mount smells like the horse, it’s difficult to tell.  
  
John takes the mug and sniffs it from up close. Soup. Possibly vomited soup, but soup. “Cheers,” he says, then takes the first sip. Tastes like potatoes and squirrel meat. Possibly rabbit.  
  
“Is there a reason you’re not following your future queen? You’re a loyal man, John.”  
  
“Yeah,” John says.  
  
Sherlock waits.  
  
John drinks his soup.  
  
“And?” Sherlock prompts.  
  
John drains the mug and presses it back into Sherlock’s hands. “Thanks,” he says.  
  
Sherlock looks away, discomfort and pleasure plain across his features. He clears his throat and murmurs, soft and sure, “You’re welcome.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Beneath These Skies](https://archiveofourown.org/works/589208) by [dee-light (DraloreShimare)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DraloreShimare/pseuds/dee-light)




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